Challenging Lions Come Prowling
464 – 478 CE
"The axe forgets. The tree remembers."
The inability to forgive old wrongs and let toxic grudges pass into the grave is a uniquely human phenomenon, for no other animal shows such stubbornness in persisting in self-destructive behaviors. In this area, the machinations of the disgraced Baturu family were a prime example. When Lamin’s armies marched on Bani’s, Ansongo’s breakaway province, capital in 368 CE and threatened siege, the Baturu family had been forced to flee with naught but the clothes on their backs and a small loyal retinue of slaves, soldiers, and jalis. The Baturu clan fled their ancestral provincial capital of Bani when the Crocodile’s War was all but lost and arrived in the kingdom of Mao which was centered around Lake Chad, hard worn yet still regal the following month where they were warmly received at Faya, Mao’s capital city, by its king, Nadji. For two years after the flight from Bani, the ex-royal family waited to see how the war would play out, hoping that the tide would be turned, and when that became unlikely, hoping that the new government established by Lamin would buckle under the weight of political reforms and barbarian invasions. Around 371, when that also became unlikely, the Baturus, led by Isatou, the shrewd third eldest daughter of Ebou II, sold most of their possessions excluding slaves and purchased a large fertile plot of land that directly bordered Lake Chad. By selling their belongings save for a few family heirlooms it was clear that for at least the next few decades, the Baturus were in Mao to stay. For nearly eight decades, the Baturu clan fell into a rhythm that was not altogether unpleasant and was certainly better than the many slaves and peasants that choked the lands of Mao, but they spent their lives haunted by memories of Ansongo’s prestige. The Baturus became mighty slavers in the pattern of the later days of their Ansongoan reign, using their residual wealth to buy slaves to work their lands and fish their streams and portion of the Lake, then selling the resulting harvests to purchase more slaves that would in turn be used to either put more land under the hoe or sold north across the Saharan Desert to the famed slave market of Egypt and from there, west to the Suebi kingdoms or east to Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Eventually in 420 CE, slaves sold by the deposed clan were distinguished by a custom brand of the king cheetah, their clan sigil, to further distinguish those enslaved and trained by the Baturus from those of other merchants. Slave trading was a large proportion of Mao’s economy and the Baturus did it better than most so their social position, already bolstered by being the former rulers of Ansongo, rose even higher. But even as the Baturus began to possess comforts like those in their old life as Ansongo’s imperial clan, they were always mindful that these were pale shadows of the luxuries they’d enjoyed when they had resided in Bamako, and the family’s collective thoughts turned to all they had lost because of Lamin and his Mariko clan.
In this way what was once a hidden desire whispered between clan elders, became a familial ambition; the Baturu clan would bend Mao’s government to their will and reclaim their throne. Mao would have to be manipulated into war, for news of the coup in Bamako was known in Mao only a few weeks after it occurred but the king of Mao had made no move to capitalize on Ansongo’s civil war. “A leopard does not interfere when lions fight”, was an oft said expression during the days of The Crocodile’s War and one that had caused Isatou endless frustration as she lived out her days in Mao. By 450 CE, the Baturus intermarried with several houses of Mao’s nobility, who were mostly of the Kanembu people, and so were able to gradually cultivate a more anti-Ansongoan slant in Mao. Eventually, the ruler Daouda married a Baturu woman named Tida and they had two sons and three daughters together, the eldest being a boy named “Idriss II”. On the day that Idriss II came of age, there was a great feast in the royal palace to celebrate the occasion and Tida and Idriss conspired against the king of Mao. Daouda was poisoned by crushed up king’s crown [1] (Calotropis procera) that was surreptitiously added to his wine cup and went to his bed complaining of the unusually bitter taste of his favorite Roman vintage and died later that night of what appeared to be a heart attack, and Idriss II ascended to the throne at the beginning of 454 CE’s long dry season. Now that the throne was theirs, the only tasks left were to raise support and an army for a war with Ansongo, and to carefully plan when to strike. The Baturu clan made sure to import the latest military equipment, texts, and advisors from Aksum and the embattled Egyptian Empire to give them the strongest edge possible over Ansongo’s significantly larger forces. This included better steel weapons, stronger bows, and better saddles and bits to control their giant eland mounts. All was ready by 460 CE to begin the invasion of Ansongo while they were still embroiled in conflicts with the Karoo and Bafer peoples, when a coalition of exiled Dinka war lords and their associated clans invaded from the wastes and began raiding the eastern reaches of Mao, drawn by tales of “millet fields as tall as a grown man” and “fattened cattle and elands”. They were fairly Egyptianized with Egyptian loan words that concerned literature and urban life in their Nilo-Saharan language and their clothing and customs spoke to a melding of the cultures of the Nile Delta and the Sudd. They troubled Mao greatly by raiding villages and granaries at the edges of the kingdom, stealing cattle and elands and abducting women and slaves at any given opportunity which they used to gain more followers and increase the size of their households. They did not use horses or elands but instead relied heavily on spear-bearing infantry for their shock troops, and so skillful were the Dinka in this strategy that yielded success in multiple battles that the Maoans began referring to them as “human horses”. Eventually during the long rainy season of 463 CE, the Dinka were defeated and incorporated into the Maoan military structure as mercenaries because while the Dinka would’ve ordinarily been driven out into the Desert to die or enslaved once defeated, Idriss II planned to use them in his campaign against Ansongo by carving from the empire its southeastern provinces, Bani being chief among them, and incorporate them into Mao. So in 467 CE after several years of recovery from its war with the Dinka, the kingdom of Mao attacked the struggling empire of Ansongo. Idriss’s hope was to quickly occupy all of Bani and portions of the surrounding provinces before Ansongo could adequately react, with the hope that by the time the high generals could bring their armies to bear, the Baturu forces would be too deeply entrenched to make the ensuing fight tenable in the long term. Bani was viewed as a hotbed for Baturu loyalists and the hopes were that the loyalists, self-proclaimed as “The Cheetah’s Sons”, would revolt in support of the Baturu clan and would help fight Ansongo’s forces for control of Bani.
And on the western border of Ansongo, the vultures of war were starting to circle as well. Kita had claimed its full independence from Ansongo’s tributary system in 364 CE and regarded the second flowering of its former master with trepidation. Kita had invested somewhat in caravan trade, but far more so in maritime commerce with the development of river and ocean-faring technology, and it boasted the most sophisticated ships in Sub-Saharan West Africa. It used these ships to ply the distance between the mouth of the Senegal River and the small archipelago located northwest off the coast of the Atlas Mountains where they would meet Punic sailors that would then take their gold and other products in exchange for glass, salt, and other commodities from the Germanic kingdoms of North Africa, the quickly expanding Roman Republic, and the Punic states of Tipaza2 (IOTL Sicily), Palermo3 (IOTL Sardinia), and Vaga4 (IOTL Corsica). Many of Kita’s ships were themselves crewed by the descendants of Punic refugees that had fled Carthage’s destruction at the hands of Germanic invaders in 375 CE and established coastal communities. They still bore traditional Phoenician features but some of the young generations were breaking taboos by intermarrying with local women and their culture was starting to significantly differ from that of the new motherland of the Mediterranean Punic Isles by incorporating Wolof gods, dances, and food into their Punic repertoire. Kita was looking to expand its dominion inland to better secure gold mines and farmland and it was for that reason that Kita’s ruler Goleh plotted to conquer the territory between the Senegal and Niger rivers, a historically nebulous area between the two kingdoms that had been fought over multiple times.
When Mao launched its invasion in 467 CE, Kita sent a conquering force of 1,000 spearmen, 200 bowmen, and 1,000 eland riders into Ansongo’s westernmost province of Markala with the goal of annexation to secure the border region between the Senegal and Niger. The mansa Yoro II was furious at the twin invasions with later recordings of the event describing him as “shaking so badly with rage that the jewelry he wore rattled and even his throne minutely trembled”, thundering to his council and attendant jalis that “These treacherous jackals must needs be speared to silence”. He dispatched his high general Madi, to the west and two others named Corno, a descendant of the famed Sainey5, and Kabaa to the east. They were given the formidable tasks of driving back the invaders from Ansongo’s borders and back into the endless grasslands. The eland cavalry of Ansongo pushed back the forces of Kita back into the bend between the Niger and Senegal Rivers where it secured a crucial success where it slaughtered most of its bowmen due to a fortuitous sandstorm that confused Kita’s army’s battle formations. The king of Kita Goleh, desperate to avoid defeat, implored the semi-autonomous Wolof clans to join the war against Ansongo, imploring in a letter carried by his chief jali “If the Great Crocodile [Ansongo] should be allowed to plunder Kita, we will all be sold in the slave markets of Goundam and Bamako. They will not spare your women and children, nor take your peacefulness for respect, but instead for weakness.”. The most prominent of the Wolof chiefs, Sherif, heeded the words of the jali and the letters of the king and gathered his warriors as well as though of other chiefs and went to Kita’s aid. This totaled around 10,000 men in all, most of them spearmen. They joined the war at the Battle of Mahina, where they managed to ambush a larger Ansongoan force as it faced the main Kita-commanded force and produced a great slaughter of some 15,000 soldiers, including Madi, while managing to capture many of the eland mounts not killed in the battle. If this war to have taken placed during Ansongo’s Full Bloom, another army or two would’ve been raised to deal with the outsiders, but in the time where the empire was still recovering from recent northern skirmishes and with the Saharan trade was at a low point, the empire’s coffers were strained and the defeat was an utter disaster.
However, if the war in the west was going poorly, the empire’s eastern flank was better served by the high generals, in part because high general Corno had made a point of studying the battles of the Crocodile’s War as well as the tactics of the lacustrine kingdom and directed his and Kabaa’s armies in how to counter the main Maoan soldiers and generals. The main army of Mao was led by the son of Idriss II, Ousman, and he was eager to “reclaim the home of my ancestors, where our bones are buried” and led a campaign of some 20,000 men and 10,000 riders to retake Bani, bolstered by the Dinka clan warriors that had been incorporated into Mao some eight years ago. They carried with them the banners bearing the Baturu’s clan crest, the same one branded on the slaves they sold at their Lake Chad compound; the proud king cheetah passant on a red background. The Baturus were met with initial success, sweeping into an unsuspecting Bani, easily capturing several border towns before traversing inwards towards Bamako that lay within the inland Niger delta. Caught unawares, local Ansongoan forces retreated inwards, carrying whatever crops they could and destroying those they couldn’t, often leveraging the villagers for help. Instead of invading on the North-South axis, Ousman was forced to travel from East to West, allowing the Ansongo’s strategic depth to frustrate them. Ousman eventually succeeded in capturing enough cities in Bani and even declared himself mansa in late 468 CE, but the declaration was short-lived as Kabaa, aided by Corno, rallied enough soldiers to fight the bulk of Ousman’s forces near the town of Sanam and forced the battle into an open field where Ansongoan trained cavalry had the advantage. Ansongo’s forces, now bolstered by Karoo riders, killed nearly 10,350 of the Baturu’s forces and captured the remaining 3,243 men as prisoners of war. Ousman fled with his remaining 2,000 men, most of whom were Dinka spearmen, and took his human horses back into the capital of Bani, also named Bani, and settled into his family’s ancestral palace that had been remade into a military command center after the Marikos had usurped them. He did not have to wait for long as in the spring of 469 CE, his father Idrissa II sent a force of 15,000 commanded by Wadel, a Kanembu native of Mao, whose strategy had proven instrumental in pacifying the Dinka invaders. Wadel fought his way to Bani, and freed Ousman from siege, disrupting Corno’s forces and worked to secure Bani province, and in a country where guerilla attacks were common, that proved deceptively difficult.
And so, it was in 470 CE, where it seemed Bani would be lost to Mao and Markala to Kita that the mansa Yoro II began having strange visions where he claimed a regal looking man and woman would advise him on how to maintain the societal unity and economic stability of Ansongo and repel the outsiders. When he implemented their advice such as drafting the Karoo into all military positions with the promise of the full rights and benefits of Ansongoan citizenship and allowing the high generals and their subordinates more autonomy in how they fought the war, he began purposely seeking their counsel through mystic herbs, dances, and fasting. Eventually by the advice of an imperial jali, he invited priests to the religious and political capital of Bamako to teach him about the Path of the Two Gods and he converted within a week’s time, convinced that the man and woman he saw in his dreams were Tahres, the Father, and Olabisi, the Mother. Seized by a religious conviction that only through the Two Gods would Ansongo be saved, Yoro II commanded that the royal family begin worshipping the Gods and directed his armies to paint Them on their shields, weapons, and chests as they faced their enemies. As Ansongo’s armies in the west and east began having larger successes after these actions, the mansa’s newfound faith in the Gods was strengthened. Later jalis would note that Mao and Kita were both beginning to suffer under the strain of invading and occupying an empire that was over four times their combined size and had many more times over their populations.
As Mao’s fortune in war soured and more of their sons and slaves died in a foreign land and wartime taxes began to reduce their living standards, the Kanembu nobility slowly turned against the Baturus, as they had previously had little reason to quarrel Ansongo and they greatly feared what should happen if Ansongo’s feared cavalry carved its way to Faya. Eventually Ousman was killed as he made his way west towards Goundam, Ansongo’s largest city, and half his remaining army destroyed while the other half surrendered in 471 CE. Wadel petitioned Idriss II for more reinforcements and while he would’ve complied with his general’s requests, a riot in Mao’s capital, later theorized to have been encouraged by disgruntled nobles, complicated efforts to resupply Mao’s forces and only a token 1,000 spearmen and 100 bowmen were sent to aid Wadel. With guerilla forces sapping his army and ever fiercer direct engagements diminishing his strength, Wadel surrendered and so ended Ansongo’s eastern troubles in 472 CE. Idriss II was furious at losing the war and tried to raise an army to defend his palace from the encroaching armies of Corno and Kabaa, but was again stymied by noble families, for so many of them now regretted ever accepting the Baturus into Mao given the ruin they were bringing onto their lakeside kingdom.
Mansa Yoro II relayed his terms of surrender to an imperial jali Modibo that then journeyed to Faya, accompanied by the high generals’ armies to relay them to Nadji, the former king’s brother. Mao would utterly submit to Ansongo’s authority, pay a war fine of 10,000 gold pieces and a yearly tribute of gold, slaves, grain, and horses to Ansongo. Additionally, a member of each noble family would become stewards in Bamako to ensure that Mao never again raised spears against the empire. And finally, the entire Baturu family and their retainers would be turned over for execution in Bamako. The terms were agreed to as Mao had little real choice in the matter for the kingdom was utterly spent, both financially and demographically, and had nothing but the corpses of its youths to show for it. The Baturus did end up receiving their wish of returning back to the royal city of Bamako, but instead of cheering crowds and cries of “mansa”, it was jeers and insults that greeted them. Yoro II of the Mariko clan himself greeted Idriss II of the Baturu clan, both the direct descendants of rivals whose enmity had sustained itself far further than detached reason could hope to explain, but now was the time it all ended. Yoro II was not going to make the same infamous mistake as Lamin, who blinded by grief had dishonored the gods and royal Baturu name by slaughtering his former mansa like one would an eland in 368 CE. Three priests, one of the traditional Mande gods and a male priest and female priest who followed the Two God Path stood on the platform to the side to give their blessing for what was about to occur. Then a headsman wearing a black lacquered mask of the Mandinkan death god quickly and dispassionately beheaded every member of the Baturu clan, starting with the children and ending with Tida, and finally killing her son Idriss II. People later said that “When the headsman killed the Baturu king, he merely killed a husk. His soul left his body when his mother died.”. The family line was extinguished, their home in Mao demolished, and their land divided by Bamako between the nobles that had schemed against them. In this manner ended the main bloodline of the visionary who had united the Mandinka people and forged Ansongo into the empire it currently was.
Of curious note was that one of Idriss II’s daughters, Kati, was not present at the execution with soldiers claiming she died in the confusion when Mao’s royal palace had been stormed, but a body was never found. Perhaps some servant pitied the girl, no older than seven, and had managed to slip her away during the confusion when Faya had been sacked. Sometime around the day the Baturu family was executed, an Egyptian governor noted in his records that a black woman and small black girl had arrived in his formerly Nubian province “dressed in the style of those from the desert lake kingdom”, begging for asylum and had produced a solid gold king cheetah statue with ruby eyes as proof of the girl’s royal birth. What happened next to Kati was lost to the sands of history.
Back in the west, the Wolof forces of Kita continued their march through Markala, slowing under an increasing heavy barrage of local guerilla tactics, and ancillary forces coming to the aid of Sidiki, a new high general that had taken over the western campaign when Madi had been killed . The two armies might have stalemated forever if two things hadn’t happened. With Mao’s unconditional surrender in the spring of 472 CE, the forces of Corno could be redirected to the Ansongo’s western border and other resources were available for use against Kita, and slowly but surely the invading army was halted, and then pushed back towards the border. A decisive battle at the town of Oualia, led to the destruction of nearly an entire two clan’s worth of warriors and broke the resolve of many of the Wololf fighters that king Goleh had persuaded to join the war. Led by Sherif, they headed back to their coastal towns along the Senegal River’s and the Western Ocean’s coasts to fortify them against the oncoming onslaught. The Desertion of Sherif as it became known irreparably weakened Kita’s main army and later battle continually sapped their strength until they withdrew to Kita’s borders. Knowing that the war was possibly lost, Goleh sent griots to hammer out turns of a conditional surrender, but Yoro II refused, the treachery of both Kita and Mao, the “treacherous challenging lions” he called them, fresh in his mind. He took the advice of the Two Gods in his visions and that of his councilors and countered with demands for an unconditional surrender; Ansongo’s future needed to be secured. King Goleh refused the terms, and the fighting resumed in the fall of 475 CE. In contrast to how much trouble Kita had caused within Ansongo, the fighting within in its borders was far tamer and within two months of razing parts of the country and killing Kita’s soldiers, Corno and Sidiki’s armies occupied most of the kingdom. Convinced that he would be tortured before being executed, Goleh committed suicide, hanging himself under the branches of a twisted baobab tree. His son Masireh ascended to the throne and offered an unconditional surrender to Sidiki, which was accepted, and the Treacherous War was finally finished in late 478. Ansongo directly annexed Kita and its territories in a bid to capture the oceanic trade that had blossomed under Kita’s reign, allowing most of the local governance, including Masireh, to remain in their current positions, with the stipulation that members of the imperial and noble families had to send members to be fostered in the city of Bamako. Caught up in the triumph of winning what had been thought to be an apocalyptic war, an elated Corno rode his red giant eland into the waters of the Western Ocean, with the Two Gods painted on his armor, weapons and chest, boasting “From Ocean to Lake, desert to forest, the Crocodile reigns supreme!”.
