How are the slave markets in TTL? I think that without the Muslim influence the slave markets of Africa should be less evolved than in OTL. Byzantines could be the biggest slave traders of TTL.
Taking the Cross: A Crusader ATL
- Thread starter Dieu Le Roi
- Start date
- Status
How are the slave markets in TTL? I think that without the Muslim influence the slave markets of Africa should be less evolved than in OTL. Byzantines could be the biggest slave traders of TTL.
Yep, the north African slave markets are smaller and the largest are in Byzantium. Slavery exists in the crusader states, but less so than in Byzantium and is also a mainly urban thing thanks to laws prohibiting just using slaves as workers on farms. They're usually used as domestic workers for the very rich and are pretty rare. The fact that Christians can't be slaves and if the Muslims convert they are free helps keep the numbers down too.
Queen Lucie the Good
Queen Lucie the Good
When Shahrukh the Magnificent had launched his attempted invasion of the crusader states in 1402, it had resulted in the various Christian states banding together to face the grave threat his army had posed to their survival. Alone among his peers, Prince Henry V of Antioch had refused to march against their enemy and became subject to accusations of treachery against his allies and fellow Christians once the fighting was over. In truth, it is likely he refused to march out because of his poor relations with the Byzantines and Jerusalemites and viewed the Byzantine armies marching near his border with distrust, worrying that should he depart with his men they would snatch away his cities. Ironically, the old question of Antioch which had long kept the little state independent, was speedily resolved once Henry had made this terrible error. With the death of three kings at the battle of Bughah, only the distant Byzantine Emperor and elderly Georgian King being spared thanks to their absence, Jerusalem needed a new ruler and as such the Haute Cour was convened, King Godfrey III having died without a direct male heir. Two factions emerged in the squabbling over the crown, one being the noble faction who sought to avoid a war with Antioch and the second being the court faction, dedicated to further centralising power in the hands of the King and punishing Henry for his failure to answer his allies’ call. The first was led by the old veteran warrior Prince Rægenhere II of Galilee, whose family had held Galilee as vassals to the King for near enough a hundred years since his ancestor Hunwald had won the favour of King Amalric II in the days following the end of the hated Joscelin’s reign. The latter was nominally headed by Countess Lucie, a widowed relative of the late King who was a part of the Al-Tall family who sat in their castle near Damascus and did their very best never to get involved with the politics of the Kingdom. Highly intelligent and with an iron will, Lucie had previously relied on Grandmaster Fulk of the Hospitallers as her closest friend and ally in the vicious political climate of Jerusalem, but with his death (alongside the grandmasters of the Templars, the Order of St Lazarus, the Order of St Jude, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre) at the Battle of Bughah, she was left alone to lead the court faction. It should also be noted that she received no help from her immediate family, who had suffered the loss of Lord Hugo of Al-Tall and his two eldest sons at the battle and were now led by Lord Roger, Hugo’s last surviving son, who was steadfastly sticking to the family tradition of attempting to remain above politics and simply riding out wherever the monarch asked. The kingdom came to the brink of civil war as the two factions argued between themselves, but in the end the result was decided by Prince Rægenhere, who decided to allow Lucie to take the throne so long as his own children could inherit following her death due to his own conviction that Henry of Antioch must be punished for his actions. Despite the desperate scrambling of the noble faction to produce another claimant, the effect of Rægenhere’s deal was such that the Haute Cour proclaimed Lucie Queen of Jerusalem.
Asking the Haute Cour to authorise a war against Antioch, Lucie was able to wrangle virtually whatever she wanted out of them with Rægenhere’s support as he had become her most steadfast ally (it probably helped to know that his children were her heirs). With the support of the only surviving Prince in the entire Kingdom (the others all having died at Bughah), she was able to easily control the higher nobles (most of them being unexpected heirs to their new positions) and the lesser nobles subsequently fell in line. In 1403 the army finally marched out, a somewhat pitiful force of 6,000 men with Lucie and Rægenhere at their head soon joined by a further 4,000 Byzantines, remnants of the second Byzantine force sent to check Shahrukh’s invasion. Against them Henry was able to gather 9,000 of his own men, setting the stage for the Battle of Tripoli in which Rægenhere, despite his advanced age was able to lead Jerusalem to victory over Antioch, with 6,000 of Henry’s men slain for the cost of 1,000 Jerusalemites and 300 Byzantines, Tripoli itself subsequently falling after a short siege. For the next three years the two sides exchanged blows, with Henry retreating into the mountains to avoid capture and making good use of his many and powerful fortresses, a slow campaign seeing Lucie and Rægenhere reducing each in turn. The Ambush at Mount Lebanon was Henry’s greatest success of the war, when in late 1403 he successfully attacked Jerusalemite reinforcements from Edessa, killing around 3,000 and capturing a further 4,000 of the 8,000 strong force, for the cost of only 1,500 of his own men. This set back Lucie’s invasion and dragged out the war until in 1405 she secured the support of the nobles of Aleppo, who turned the city over to her, setting Henry on the back foot and allowing her to march on Antioch itself, which fell in 1406. Henry himself had not been in the city during the siege, but fled the country following its fall and found his way to Egypt where he lived out the remained of his years in relative obscurity.
The Byzantine claim to Antioch had been quietened before the campaign had started by the granting of extensive privileges to Byzantine merchants in the Principality, made possible by the fact that it had been hundreds of years since the Byzantines had held the region in their own right and it had long been considered a Latin territory. By bringing Antioch firmly into her Kingdom, Lucie had shown her strength as monarch and also won herself a significant amount of territory that was now beholden only to her. When combined with the death of virtually the entire higher nobility of the Kingdom at Bughah as well as many of the lesser nobles, she was thus able to begin concentrating power in her hands. By the end of her reign the power to declare war lay solely in her hands and she heavily taxed the remaining nobles, resulting in the rise of the middle class. Effectively handed a bankrupt country, she made Rægenhere’s second son, Odo, Lord High Treasurer after his father’s death in 1406 and proceeded to milk the nobility for every penny that had, to the effect that by the end of her reign the Kingdom was almost the richest it had ever been. To keep the nobility in place, she implemented a system of control through taxation and the appointment of members of the military orders, generally the Order of the Holy Sepulchre and the Order of St Jude as they were most subservient to the crown, to the position of bailiff, which under her rule evolved into a local office of which there were many throughout the Kingdom. So great was her control that even the right to raise taxes was stripped away from the Haute Cour, which was itself rendered somewhat irrelevant by the creation of the ‘Conseil des Affaires’, a council made up of a select group of lords drawn from the Haute Cour based on an earlier 12th century council of advisors which had fallen into disuse.
Although not the greatest monarch in terms on conquest, politically Queen Lucie is one of the most important for her seizing of the opportunity presented by the devastation of the nobility during the Battle of Bughah. Of course, she was also adept at foreign policy, keeping Shahrukh from attacking the Kingdom again (the utter devastation of Bughah helped somewhat of course) and strengthening the alliance between Byzantium and Jerusalem, formalised in the Treaty of Antioch (signed in 1406 with smoke still in the air from the siege). Never before had the Kingdom been so centralised and when she finally passed away in 1433, a year after the death of Shahrukh, it can truly be said that she rightly deserved the moniker Queen Lucie the Good.
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Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Wouldn't the name Lucinde be more proper for Jerusalem's Queen, being the royal court would be speaking some form of Old French? Also I noticed she isn't from any of the European-descended families! So native Syrians are finally getting ahead in the Kingdom of Jerusalem! Such progress! 
Wouldn't the name Lucinde be more proper for Jerusalem's Queen, being the royal court would be speaking some form of Old French? Also I noticed she isn't from any of the European-descended families! So native Syrians are finally getting ahead in the Kingdom of Jerusalem! Such progress!
Should it be Lucinde? I was trying to find the French form of Lucy, but from what I could tell Lucinde is a more modern name.
Nah, Francis of Al-Tall is a Latin (albeit a commoner), he just got the name for being made lord of that place. Although I'd say it is pretty likely he had some native Syriac blood in him (even if the family and others chose to ignore it).
The natives are going to start getting a better deal from now on though, as the feudal system is declining.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Also have any Arab tribes reverted to Christianity? Has Jerusalem tried to use missionaries to bring some of the Arabs back into the fold? Have they been successful at it?
Queen of the Adriatic
Queen of the Adriatic
For many years, the Italian peninsular had been the centre of the three most powerful mercantile empires in the Mediterranean, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice. Sicily alone was the strongest, having extended its domain over much of costal Tunisia and Tripolitania in the late 14th century, with its powerful armies sweeping away all before them. Allied to them were the Genoese, who found themselves in near constant battle with the Aragonese, who were desperate to ensure their survival by securing resources outside of Iberia. The Venetians, old enemies of Sicily, had slowly been finding themselves forced out of the eastern Mediterranean since their puppet King Joscelin of Jerusalem had died in 1258 and the nobles had prevented their next candidate from succeeding him. Without the resources of the Holy Land now closed to them, they had found themselves being pushed back by the combined forces of the Byzantines, the Jerusalemites and the Sicilians. Still, with the help of the most powerful navy in Christendom for nearly two centuries they kept their enemies at bay, fighting innumerable wars to defend their share of the lucrative east-west trade. Eventually however, the tide turned when a combined Sicilian and Byzantine fleet won a great victory at the Battle of Fanò Island in 1405, in which the allied fleet attempted to bottle up the Venetians in the Adriatic by taking the strategic island of Corfu, heavily fortified by the Venetians who were well aware of its importance. To prevent the allies from landing their 26,000 strong invasion force (the size of which the Venetians were aware of) the Venetian fleet met them close to the island of Fanò (Othonoi), resulting in a great clash between the 133 Venetian ships and the 69 Sicilian and 51 Byzantine ships opposing them. Usually, the superior seamanship of the Venetians ensued that they emerged victorious from naval battles, but when they began engaging the allied fleet and began a running battle than led south from Fanò, a smaller Sicilian force arrived late and hit their right flank, scattering their formation and forcing many ashore on Corfu. With the Venetians confused, the allies were able to pin them against Corfu and reduced their fleet through boardings, where they were able to put their troops to good use. The Venetian flagship (the galleass ‘Leone d’Oro’ of ‘Golden Lion’) was sunk at this critical juncture, when it was rammed by the Sicilian ship the ‘San Giovanni’ and a fire broke out, eventually causing both ships to sink beneath the waves. Doge Virgilio of Venice presumably drowned when the flagship went down, as he was aboard at the time and he was last seen rallying his men against the Sicilians amidst the flames.
By the end of the battle, the Venetian fleet had been badly bloodied with 30 ships sunk and a further 24 captured for the loss of 15 Sicilians and 8 Byzantine ships. However, what proved decisive was the storm that destroyed much of the remaining Venetian fleet in the days that followed the battle as they attempted to reach friendly ports in Dalmatia, 47 of the remaining 79 Venetian ships (many of which were badly damaged from the battle) being lost in the storm. The allied force found safe haven on Corfu (much of which they had quickly captured following the battle, despite many castles on the island continuing to hold out), only the force of 34 Sicilian and 20 Byzantine ships sent to pursue the Venetians losing any ships to the weather (seven of the former and three of the latter were lost), although they succeeded in capturing six of the Venetian ships they were pursuing. When all was said and done, only 26 ships out of the original 133 in the Venetian fleet succeeded in returning to friendly ports intact, crippling the Venetian navy. Of course, having long suffered near constant war with their enemies and reliant on the navy as their true guardian, the Venetians were better adapted than most to replace lost ships, their immense shipyards ready at a moment’s notice to churn out a new fleet. Indeed, their shipbuilding capabilities were unmatched in Christendom. But unfortunately for them, the battle had come at a grave time when Milan had invaded their Italian lands and were closing in on their capital, forcing them to divert their resources towards this new threat from the west. With the Venetians occupied and most of their ships either at the bottom of the sea or occupied defending Venice itself, the Sicilians and the Byzantines were free to disassemble the Venetian overseas territories with relative impunity, spending the rest of 1405 and the next year doing just that. Corfu and Crete, both of which the Venetians had taken at the height of the power, were returned to the Byzantines, whilst Cyrenaica, a valuable link in the trade between Venice and Egypt, was taken by the Sicilians. Only the Papacy’s intervention on the behalf of the Venetians against the Milanese prevented the complete collapse of their state.
Still, although they were stripped of much of their power, the Venetians continued to dominate the Adriatic and remained a regional power until they were finally swallowed whole by Milan at the end of the 15th century, their Balkan territories being seized by Hungary. With their possessions on the mainland stripped away from them and the threat of their city being destroyed, the Venetians had decided to willingly surrender to Milan in return for autonomy (their city continued to run as a republic) within the duchy. When the 16th century finally dawned on Italy, the two major land powers were the Papacy, which had gathered the smaller states (Florence, Siena, Pisa and Naples) to her as allies, and Milan, which was able to field vast armies alone and counted the Holy Roman Empire as its ally. Of the mercantile empires only Sicily still stood proud as a major power, its domain stretching across the Mediterranean from Italy to North Africa to Cyprus, leaving them to dominate the east-west trade. Genoa had never reached the same heights as the Venetians or Sicilians and was worn down gradually by Aragon until they were left without any overseas territory and were relegated to the position of a Milanese vassal.
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EDIT: changed bit about continued Venetian autonomy under Milan
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I imagine there are some missionaries there. The situation in North Africa will become more apparent soon
As for Arabia, I haven't quite decided yet. What religions do you think could replace Islam in Persia? I was thinking maybe Nestorianism, but I think that had been pretty much wiped out by now.Thanks!
corrected
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
I imagine there are some missionaries there. The situation in North Africa will become more apparent soon
To be honest, there's no real competitor to usurp Islam's position from Persia or the Arabian peninsula. The steppe nomads in the Eurasian steppe are predominately Muslim and there is no chance for any religion to make inroads.
The most you could get is more of northern Iraq and Azerbaijan to become Christian through missionary activity and military expansionism.
Nice update again!
Ah well haha I'll just have to think of something else to do with the region ITTL
Oh a related but somewhat more modern note, I've been reading about the Nineveh Plain Protection Units and you guys might find them interesting reading. I do hope things turn out okay for the Assyrians over there.
Thanks!
The Crow and the Pitcher
This one's gone quite far back in time, hope you don't mind too much Wanted to do a piece on the reconquista before updates on some other stuff. It happens earlier than OTL and the link between the Moslem east and west has been severed by the crusaders in the Holy Land and Egypt.
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It had been many centuries since the Moslems had first set foot in Iberia, but it was only in the reign of King Arias II that they were finally forced from the peninsular. By the time Arias came to the throne in 1376, the Moslem holdings had been reduced to two small strips of territory on the south coat, dominated by numerous fortresses that had, so far, kept the Christians from destroying them. The smaller of the two Moslem states was the Emirate of Marbil-la, guarded by three fortified points that provided the cornerstones of the realm, the cities of Ronda and Casares and the formidable castle at the town of Marbella (Marbil-la to the Moslems, hence the Emirate’s name). Marbella’s fortress lay some distance from the small town itself, atop the Pico de la Concha which overlooks the town below. It consisted of an immense citadel and two sets of walls, the outer wall a simple affair that snaked around the crest of the mountain and the inner wall tall and close to the keep, boasting a gigantic gatehouse and numerous round towers along its length. Built in the early 14th century when the Moslems were still rich and powerful, it was paid for in large part with the loot from the city of Seville, which was taken back by the fearsome Moslem ruler Sa’d II, who singlehandedly reversed the decline of the Moslems in Iberia (if only for two generations), after the Christian recaptured it in the late 13th century. Widely lauded as a great feat of engineering among both the Moslems and the Christians, it was considered one of the strongest castles in the peninsular. Of course, much had changed since the days of Marbil-la Castle’s construction, Seville was once again a Christian city and now they marched to finally drive the invaders into the sea.
In 1378, two years after Arias had come to the throne, the truce between his Kingdom and Marbil-la expired, giving him the perfect opportunity to fulfil his dream of a crusade that would drive the heathens out of his lands. A Papal Bull hand been secured in advance and it was commonly known throughout Christendom that recruits for the crusade were needed, swelling his army of 22,000 with a further 10,000 foreigners. Added to this were 800 Templars and 1,500 knights of Badajoz (the Order of Badajoz having been founded in a merger of the order of Alcántara and the order of Avis sometime after the joining of the Leónese and Portuguese crowns), for a grand total of 34,300 soldiers. In the face of this force the Moslems fell back to the castles, which fell one by one by assault and starvation until by 1380 only Marbil-la remained, the best Moslem troops and leaders concentrated within its walls. Here began the first of the three great sieges the castle would suffer at the hands of Arias, a five month affair that saw the town burned by the crusaders and repeated assaults on the outer wall fail throughout the first month before the besiegers settled on attempting to starve out the defenders. Unfortunately for Arias and his men, inadequate preparation for a protracted siege had been made on his part and after taking Ronda and Casares by assault, he had lost many of his best men. The death of the great siege engineer Vermuu in a cave-in as he inspected a tunnel in the second month of the siege reduced the King’s appetite for attempting to actually attempt to take the walls and the Christians contented themselves with simply ensuring that no-one could get in or out of the fortress. In the third month disease struck the besieger’s camp, killing roughly 12,000 men by the time they departed early in the fifth month (the fourth having been characterised by mass desertions among the Christians, totalling almost 6,000 soldiers). Much celebration was reported among the Moslems as the Christians departed, although their town had been ravaged and the outer wall breached several times, the necessary full repair and reconstruction remaining beyond the means of the Moslems who suffered great poverty.
Disheartened by his failure to crush Marbil-la, Arias returned home and began drawing up detailed plans for taking the fortress although it would not be until 1389 that he was able to march against them once again, as war broke out between his Kingdom and the Emirate of Granada in 1381. Granada, inspired by the example of Marbil-la and considering Arias to be in a weakened state, stepped up border raids and eventually outright invaded his realm. For the next six years the two countries battled one another, until eventually Granada was destroyed in 1387, three years after the city of Granada itself had been taken. Finally free to pursue his aim of destroying Marbil-la, Arias assembled an army of 20,000 soldiers, 1,000 knights of Badajoz, 4,000 crusaders and 40,000 labourers. Once again burning the town of Marbil-la when he arrived, he carefully prepared for an assault on the castle walls, undermining the gatehouse of the outer wall and a section of the inner wall. When fires were set in the tunnels, the mines collapsed and brought with them virtually all of the outer gatehouse, as well as half a tower and a section of wall in the inner wall. The Christians stormed forwards and swept through the breaches in the outer wall, overwhelming the Moslem barricades and fighting through the outer bailey until they reached the inner wall. Unfortunately for them, the mining had not caused the complete collapse of the wall and tower, instead only causing a partial collapse so that to advance they were forced to literally climb up a steep pile of rubble that led to a gap in the side of the tower and the top of the wall. Pelted with arrows, rocks (of which there were now many lying around), and spears, the Christians were killed in droves as they attempted to climb up, various boiling liquids (some flammable) being poured down upon their heads. Although it was apparent to the Christians at the front that it would be virtually impossible to fight their way through the inner walls via this breach, those at the back kept them pressed against it as more and more men joined the mob after getting through the outer wall. By the end of the day, 3,000 Christians lay dead at the inner wall, having failed to fight their way in. Nevertheless, Arias was determined to take the castle and a battering ram was constructed to smash a way in through the gate. Two more assaults on the castle were launched, the first attacking the gate and the second attacking both the gate and the breach (which had been since been widened considerably), but both were repulsed, although by the end of the second the Moslems were considering abandoning the walls and retreating to the keep. With work on more tunnels underway, it is virtually certain that the walls would have fallen in the six month of the siege had a Moslem fleet not arrived from North Africa. The last hurrah of the Moslems in North Africa, the fleet itself was incredibly weak and would certainly have been destroyed by the Christian fleets in the area were it not for the skilful seamanship of the Moslem corsair Yusuf al-‘Abbas, who used his own ships as a distraction before leading the fleet through the opening provided. 23,000 men were landed a short distance from Marbil-la and a great battle took place in the ruins of the town that saw 10,000 Christians and 2,500 Moslems killed before Arias was forced to retreat and abandon his siege, once again leaving the city in Moslem hands.
Furious at being once again denied his prize, King Arias prepared a great armada to invade North Africa, intent utterly laying waste to the region. For the next three years he campaigned, burning city after city and slaughtering thousands, earning him the hatred of the Moslems and tarnishing his otherwise excellent reputation (he was previously considered a magnanimous if tenacious foe). Return to Iberia, he once again raised an army and besieged Marbil-la in 1393. His force comprised 3,000 crusaders, 8,000 mercenaries, 1,000 knights of Badajoz, 10,000 of his own men and 35,000 labourers. An initial assault saw the dilapidated outer wall quickly overrun before being halted at the inner wall, whereupon tunnels were dug and breaches created until the wall was virtually rubble. Still, the Moslem defenders continued to push the Christians back from the top of the piles of rubble that now constituted the inner walls for a further week until they were forced into the keep. At this point King Arias offered the Moslems a chance to surrender, which was refused, before the keep itself was mined and the gate battered in. With the walls of the keep coming down around them, the remaining Moslems made a last stand and killed ten times their number before finally falling with not a single defender of the fortress surviving the siege. With the castle finally in his hands, Arias had the few sections of the inner and outer walls still standing torn down, rebuilding the keep and turning it into a monastery. They town below was so thoroughly destroyed over the course of the three sieges that it was simply left empty and abandoned. King Arias is remembered as a devout ruler who completed the Reconquista and set in motion the events that would led to the Limpieza, although he is also responsible for making Badajoz the capital by moving his court there.
Wanted to do a piece on the reconquista before updates on some other stuff. It happens earlier than OTL and the link between the Moslem east and west has been severed by the crusaders in the Holy Land and Egypt.---
The Crow and the Pitcher
It had been many centuries since the Moslems had first set foot in Iberia, but it was only in the reign of King Arias II that they were finally forced from the peninsular. By the time Arias came to the throne in 1376, the Moslem holdings had been reduced to two small strips of territory on the south coat, dominated by numerous fortresses that had, so far, kept the Christians from destroying them. The smaller of the two Moslem states was the Emirate of Marbil-la, guarded by three fortified points that provided the cornerstones of the realm, the cities of Ronda and Casares and the formidable castle at the town of Marbella (Marbil-la to the Moslems, hence the Emirate’s name). Marbella’s fortress lay some distance from the small town itself, atop the Pico de la Concha which overlooks the town below. It consisted of an immense citadel and two sets of walls, the outer wall a simple affair that snaked around the crest of the mountain and the inner wall tall and close to the keep, boasting a gigantic gatehouse and numerous round towers along its length. Built in the early 14th century when the Moslems were still rich and powerful, it was paid for in large part with the loot from the city of Seville, which was taken back by the fearsome Moslem ruler Sa’d II, who singlehandedly reversed the decline of the Moslems in Iberia (if only for two generations), after the Christian recaptured it in the late 13th century. Widely lauded as a great feat of engineering among both the Moslems and the Christians, it was considered one of the strongest castles in the peninsular. Of course, much had changed since the days of Marbil-la Castle’s construction, Seville was once again a Christian city and now they marched to finally drive the invaders into the sea.
In 1378, two years after Arias had come to the throne, the truce between his Kingdom and Marbil-la expired, giving him the perfect opportunity to fulfil his dream of a crusade that would drive the heathens out of his lands. A Papal Bull hand been secured in advance and it was commonly known throughout Christendom that recruits for the crusade were needed, swelling his army of 22,000 with a further 10,000 foreigners. Added to this were 800 Templars and 1,500 knights of Badajoz (the Order of Badajoz having been founded in a merger of the order of Alcántara and the order of Avis sometime after the joining of the Leónese and Portuguese crowns), for a grand total of 34,300 soldiers. In the face of this force the Moslems fell back to the castles, which fell one by one by assault and starvation until by 1380 only Marbil-la remained, the best Moslem troops and leaders concentrated within its walls. Here began the first of the three great sieges the castle would suffer at the hands of Arias, a five month affair that saw the town burned by the crusaders and repeated assaults on the outer wall fail throughout the first month before the besiegers settled on attempting to starve out the defenders. Unfortunately for Arias and his men, inadequate preparation for a protracted siege had been made on his part and after taking Ronda and Casares by assault, he had lost many of his best men. The death of the great siege engineer Vermuu in a cave-in as he inspected a tunnel in the second month of the siege reduced the King’s appetite for attempting to actually attempt to take the walls and the Christians contented themselves with simply ensuring that no-one could get in or out of the fortress. In the third month disease struck the besieger’s camp, killing roughly 12,000 men by the time they departed early in the fifth month (the fourth having been characterised by mass desertions among the Christians, totalling almost 6,000 soldiers). Much celebration was reported among the Moslems as the Christians departed, although their town had been ravaged and the outer wall breached several times, the necessary full repair and reconstruction remaining beyond the means of the Moslems who suffered great poverty.
Disheartened by his failure to crush Marbil-la, Arias returned home and began drawing up detailed plans for taking the fortress although it would not be until 1389 that he was able to march against them once again, as war broke out between his Kingdom and the Emirate of Granada in 1381. Granada, inspired by the example of Marbil-la and considering Arias to be in a weakened state, stepped up border raids and eventually outright invaded his realm. For the next six years the two countries battled one another, until eventually Granada was destroyed in 1387, three years after the city of Granada itself had been taken. Finally free to pursue his aim of destroying Marbil-la, Arias assembled an army of 20,000 soldiers, 1,000 knights of Badajoz, 4,000 crusaders and 40,000 labourers. Once again burning the town of Marbil-la when he arrived, he carefully prepared for an assault on the castle walls, undermining the gatehouse of the outer wall and a section of the inner wall. When fires were set in the tunnels, the mines collapsed and brought with them virtually all of the outer gatehouse, as well as half a tower and a section of wall in the inner wall. The Christians stormed forwards and swept through the breaches in the outer wall, overwhelming the Moslem barricades and fighting through the outer bailey until they reached the inner wall. Unfortunately for them, the mining had not caused the complete collapse of the wall and tower, instead only causing a partial collapse so that to advance they were forced to literally climb up a steep pile of rubble that led to a gap in the side of the tower and the top of the wall. Pelted with arrows, rocks (of which there were now many lying around), and spears, the Christians were killed in droves as they attempted to climb up, various boiling liquids (some flammable) being poured down upon their heads. Although it was apparent to the Christians at the front that it would be virtually impossible to fight their way through the inner walls via this breach, those at the back kept them pressed against it as more and more men joined the mob after getting through the outer wall. By the end of the day, 3,000 Christians lay dead at the inner wall, having failed to fight their way in. Nevertheless, Arias was determined to take the castle and a battering ram was constructed to smash a way in through the gate. Two more assaults on the castle were launched, the first attacking the gate and the second attacking both the gate and the breach (which had been since been widened considerably), but both were repulsed, although by the end of the second the Moslems were considering abandoning the walls and retreating to the keep. With work on more tunnels underway, it is virtually certain that the walls would have fallen in the six month of the siege had a Moslem fleet not arrived from North Africa. The last hurrah of the Moslems in North Africa, the fleet itself was incredibly weak and would certainly have been destroyed by the Christian fleets in the area were it not for the skilful seamanship of the Moslem corsair Yusuf al-‘Abbas, who used his own ships as a distraction before leading the fleet through the opening provided. 23,000 men were landed a short distance from Marbil-la and a great battle took place in the ruins of the town that saw 10,000 Christians and 2,500 Moslems killed before Arias was forced to retreat and abandon his siege, once again leaving the city in Moslem hands.
Furious at being once again denied his prize, King Arias prepared a great armada to invade North Africa, intent utterly laying waste to the region. For the next three years he campaigned, burning city after city and slaughtering thousands, earning him the hatred of the Moslems and tarnishing his otherwise excellent reputation (he was previously considered a magnanimous if tenacious foe). Return to Iberia, he once again raised an army and besieged Marbil-la in 1393. His force comprised 3,000 crusaders, 8,000 mercenaries, 1,000 knights of Badajoz, 10,000 of his own men and 35,000 labourers. An initial assault saw the dilapidated outer wall quickly overrun before being halted at the inner wall, whereupon tunnels were dug and breaches created until the wall was virtually rubble. Still, the Moslem defenders continued to push the Christians back from the top of the piles of rubble that now constituted the inner walls for a further week until they were forced into the keep. At this point King Arias offered the Moslems a chance to surrender, which was refused, before the keep itself was mined and the gate battered in. With the walls of the keep coming down around them, the remaining Moslems made a last stand and killed ten times their number before finally falling with not a single defender of the fortress surviving the siege. With the castle finally in his hands, Arias had the few sections of the inner and outer walls still standing torn down, rebuilding the keep and turning it into a monastery. They town below was so thoroughly destroyed over the course of the three sieges that it was simply left empty and abandoned. King Arias is remembered as a devout ruler who completed the Reconquista and set in motion the events that would led to the Limpieza, although he is also responsible for making Badajoz the capital by moving his court there.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
I don't have a good feeling about the Liempeza. It sounds like it'll be much bloodier than what happened in OTL to Spain's Muslim population especially with Leon's ability to project military power in North Africa seemingly much greater than OTL Castile's. Since Morocco isn't safe and might become a possible target for expansionism by the Leonese, a likely choice of destination for the Muslims would be to migrate south towards the Islamic empires and kingdoms in the Sahel. As it did for the Turks and the Barbary Pirates, I predict that the arrival of the Moors would contribute greatly to their strength.
Crown and Tiara
Sorry for the long wait, but better late than never hopefully Enjoy!
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Following the Cofitacheque conquest of the Chelaque in 1459, Gabriel de Lieu spent the next year in the New World integrating himself into the local skræling culture, often discussing the Old World with Paramount Chief Pedro. Pedro, a young chief, showed an interest in developing his lands into a fully-fledged kingdom in the European style, seeking to emulate much of the culture of the exotic foreigners who had become his friends. After hearing of the crusades and the religious orders who had fought back the Moslems and defeated the Holy City from the infidels, Pedro became enthusiastic about establishing the Catholic Church and (at Father Orejón’s advice) receiving the Pope’s blessing as a sovereign ruler. Assuming this would allow goods and technology from Europe to flow into his lands, Pedro was more than happy to pursue this path, especially as Father Orejón and Gabriel (although devout Catholics) were both liberal minded, barely objecting even when Pedro continued with the religious ceremonies of his own people. Indeed, Father Orejón sought to turn the local beliefs and practices to his advantage, suggesting small alternations to some ceremonies to add a Catholic flavour. As the trio became ever closer, the expedition’s military commander, Lopez, had been healing from his wounds sustained during the previous campaign. When he was healed and returned to the city of Cofitachequi, Lopez was troubled by the closeness of the relationship between Gabriel and the skrælings. Never a particularly devout man, Lopez considered the Leonese Crown to be the highest authority and was unhappy more with Gabriel failing to push Pedro to swear fealty to the King.
In early 1460, Gabriel ordered five of the ships back to Europe, their most important cargo being a message for the Pope in which Father Orejón explained that the New World was a land of natives who had never received the word of God and were ripe for conversion, as demonstrated by the baptism of their leader. Should the Pope recognise Pedro as a King and send more clergy to help lay the foundations for a new branch of the Church, the locals would quickly convert in great numbers and the Holy Father would find himself spiritual ruler of another continent. Of course, the letter was somewhat inaccurate as the extent of Cofitachequi’s domains was embellished as was their willingness to convert, but when it reached Rome it was accepted as fact (no doubt partially thanks to the immense among of gold that Gabriel was sure to send along with it to make his point) and immediately a Papal expedition found itself being prepared so as to bring the Church to the New World. When Lopez found out that Gabriel had ordered the ships back to Europe without first consulting him, he was furious and threatened to arrest Gabriel and haul him back in chains to Leon. Had he known the contents of the letter, it is likely he would have followed through with his threats. It was the beginning of a definite split between among the Leonese, who were dividing into the ‘Church Faction’, led by Gabriel and made up of the sailors and civilian members of the expedition, and the ‘Royal Faction’, led by Lopez and consisting largely of the expedition’s soldiers. The names of the two factions are somewhat misleading as neither faction had the explicit support of the Church or the Crown (both of whom remained ignorant of the situation until much later) and the Royal Faction saw the Church Faction as virtually heretical for not attempting to stamp out traditional practices among the converted skrælings completely. With Monterey firmly in the hands of the Royal Faction but the Church Faction controlling eleven of the thirteen remaining ships and having the support of the locals, Gabriel knew that should a reply come from Rome that recognised Pedro as king he would have achieved a fait accompli and Lopez would have to content himself with an alliance between Leon and Cofitachequi, rather than the vassal relationship he sought. To this end, he sought to distract Lopez by telling him of the other white men who supposedly lived quite far to the north and regularly raided along the coast, although they were said to almost never stray this far south. Lopez, horrified at the thought of other Europeans having gained a foothold in the New World, immediately set about preparing to sail north with his men.
When the voyage began in mid-1460, seven of the ships set sail with both Lopez and Gabriel aboard, although Father Orejón remained in Cofitachequi. Lopez also made sure to keep one of the ships loyal to him at Monterey so as to be able to instantly set off for Leon to warn the King of the situation should the Church Faction attempt anything at the settlement whilst he was away. Following the coast, the fleet didn’t put any parties ashore as even with the sizable Cofitacheque contingent aboard that could act as negotiators they (Gabriel especially) feared a repeat of the events that had occurred at Bahía Tristeza. When they finally sighted Vinland, they began sailing along the southern coast to find a place to anchor, eventually putting in on the island’s west coast and preparing to go ashore. Just as they were putting ashore the first landing party, the call went up that there were sails on the horizon, a fleet of nearly twenty ships fast approaching from the east and bearing a remarkable similarity to the longship of old. As they came into clearing view the sight was reported to have rattled the men, who had to be made steady by the officers. The Leonese quickly began manoeuvring to meet these strangers and sent forward a single ship to parley with them. A single longship advanced from the opposite fleet to meet them in the middle.
Enjoy!---
Crown and Tiara
Following the Cofitacheque conquest of the Chelaque in 1459, Gabriel de Lieu spent the next year in the New World integrating himself into the local skræling culture, often discussing the Old World with Paramount Chief Pedro. Pedro, a young chief, showed an interest in developing his lands into a fully-fledged kingdom in the European style, seeking to emulate much of the culture of the exotic foreigners who had become his friends. After hearing of the crusades and the religious orders who had fought back the Moslems and defeated the Holy City from the infidels, Pedro became enthusiastic about establishing the Catholic Church and (at Father Orejón’s advice) receiving the Pope’s blessing as a sovereign ruler. Assuming this would allow goods and technology from Europe to flow into his lands, Pedro was more than happy to pursue this path, especially as Father Orejón and Gabriel (although devout Catholics) were both liberal minded, barely objecting even when Pedro continued with the religious ceremonies of his own people. Indeed, Father Orejón sought to turn the local beliefs and practices to his advantage, suggesting small alternations to some ceremonies to add a Catholic flavour. As the trio became ever closer, the expedition’s military commander, Lopez, had been healing from his wounds sustained during the previous campaign. When he was healed and returned to the city of Cofitachequi, Lopez was troubled by the closeness of the relationship between Gabriel and the skrælings. Never a particularly devout man, Lopez considered the Leonese Crown to be the highest authority and was unhappy more with Gabriel failing to push Pedro to swear fealty to the King.
In early 1460, Gabriel ordered five of the ships back to Europe, their most important cargo being a message for the Pope in which Father Orejón explained that the New World was a land of natives who had never received the word of God and were ripe for conversion, as demonstrated by the baptism of their leader. Should the Pope recognise Pedro as a King and send more clergy to help lay the foundations for a new branch of the Church, the locals would quickly convert in great numbers and the Holy Father would find himself spiritual ruler of another continent. Of course, the letter was somewhat inaccurate as the extent of Cofitachequi’s domains was embellished as was their willingness to convert, but when it reached Rome it was accepted as fact (no doubt partially thanks to the immense among of gold that Gabriel was sure to send along with it to make his point) and immediately a Papal expedition found itself being prepared so as to bring the Church to the New World. When Lopez found out that Gabriel had ordered the ships back to Europe without first consulting him, he was furious and threatened to arrest Gabriel and haul him back in chains to Leon. Had he known the contents of the letter, it is likely he would have followed through with his threats. It was the beginning of a definite split between among the Leonese, who were dividing into the ‘Church Faction’, led by Gabriel and made up of the sailors and civilian members of the expedition, and the ‘Royal Faction’, led by Lopez and consisting largely of the expedition’s soldiers. The names of the two factions are somewhat misleading as neither faction had the explicit support of the Church or the Crown (both of whom remained ignorant of the situation until much later) and the Royal Faction saw the Church Faction as virtually heretical for not attempting to stamp out traditional practices among the converted skrælings completely. With Monterey firmly in the hands of the Royal Faction but the Church Faction controlling eleven of the thirteen remaining ships and having the support of the locals, Gabriel knew that should a reply come from Rome that recognised Pedro as king he would have achieved a fait accompli and Lopez would have to content himself with an alliance between Leon and Cofitachequi, rather than the vassal relationship he sought. To this end, he sought to distract Lopez by telling him of the other white men who supposedly lived quite far to the north and regularly raided along the coast, although they were said to almost never stray this far south. Lopez, horrified at the thought of other Europeans having gained a foothold in the New World, immediately set about preparing to sail north with his men.
When the voyage began in mid-1460, seven of the ships set sail with both Lopez and Gabriel aboard, although Father Orejón remained in Cofitachequi. Lopez also made sure to keep one of the ships loyal to him at Monterey so as to be able to instantly set off for Leon to warn the King of the situation should the Church Faction attempt anything at the settlement whilst he was away. Following the coast, the fleet didn’t put any parties ashore as even with the sizable Cofitacheque contingent aboard that could act as negotiators they (Gabriel especially) feared a repeat of the events that had occurred at Bahía Tristeza. When they finally sighted Vinland, they began sailing along the southern coast to find a place to anchor, eventually putting in on the island’s west coast and preparing to go ashore. Just as they were putting ashore the first landing party, the call went up that there were sails on the horizon, a fleet of nearly twenty ships fast approaching from the east and bearing a remarkable similarity to the longship of old. As they came into clearing view the sight was reported to have rattled the men, who had to be made steady by the officers. The Leonese quickly began manoeuvring to meet these strangers and sent forward a single ship to parley with them. A single longship advanced from the opposite fleet to meet them in the middle.
King Aylwin of Jerusalem
King Aylwin of Jerusalem
When Queen Lucie of Jerusalem had died in 1433, she left her successor Aylwin, Rægenhere’s eldest son, a comparatively centralised state and a respectable treasury. Never before had the Jerusalemite Kings had so much political power and authority within their own borders.
Aylwin, in his youth, had not at all been expected to rise to the throne, although he had received the usually tuition granted to a young noble at the time. He had himself been Prince of Galilee since his father’s death in 1406 and as such was a capable statesman, although the intrigues of court politics and the minutiae of ruling a Kingdom did not truly capture his interest. Nevertheless, he cannot be said to have ever shirked his duties nor have every really failed at them.
The greatest threat which he faced during his reign was that of the Mongolic and Turkic raids into Edessa, the County having once again become the Kingdom’s frontier since Shahrukh’s conquest of Mosul in 1402. After the recapture of Edessa in 1193 by the forces of the Third Crusade, King Godfrey II had worked with Humphrey V, Prince of Egypt and husband of Countess Beatrix of Edessa to create several Marcher Lords of Edessa, the most powerful of whom was the Baron of Tell Gouron, of whom the others were direct vassals. Relations between Prince Humphrey and King Godfrey were never particularly good and it was rumoured that at least part of the motivation behind the King’s 1196 expedition in Egypt was as payment in return for Humphrey acquiescing to his plans. Whatever the case, the then current Lord of Tell Gouron, a man called Nicholaus who was a supporter of Humphrey, also became the Baron of the Edessan Marches and was subsequently referred to in most records from the time as the Baron of Tell Gouron.
The descendants of that first Baron Nicholaus ruled in Edessa until their line was broken at the Battle of Sans Souci in 1280 when the Mongols defeated the Latins and consequently were able to take Edessa for themselves. A cadet branch of the family was noted to reside in Damascus and to claim the titles associated with the Baroney of the Edessan Marches, although they had disappeared from the histories by the time of the reconquest of the city by Duke Thomas of Edessa and Grandmaster Ralph Colshull (who were both probably in their seventies at the time) in the early 14th century, during which the two men lost their lives.
Following this the Baroney was granted to a French noble named Anquetin, who had previously held lands in Southern France which had been lost to the Kingdom of Arles, before becoming a court favourite of Queen Estienne, wife of King Charles of Jerusalem. Supposedly, he carried on an affair with the Queen and performed numerous heroic deeds in her name, but it should be noted that Anquetin became a popular subject among the poetry and music of the period. In all, three chansons and many smaller works were composed which featured him as a protagonist, the majority coming from the minstrel guild in Jerusalem, which was founded in 1361, making it all but impossible to distinguish the facts of Anquetin’s life from their fictions. Antequin’s descendants were the Barons of Tell Gouron until they fell out of favour with King Godfrey III of Jerusalem, eventually being forced to sell their titles to pay their considerable debts in the late 14th century. After this, the family faded from history, their last notable appearance being the tenure of one of their number, a certain Harchier, as the Castellan of Jerusalem from 1422-1427 during Queen Lucie’s reign.
The next Baron of Tell Gouron was an ennobled burgher named Julien Boutellievre, who found the posting, which came with comparatively strenuously duties, much to his disliking. He allowed the lesser Marcher Lords a much higher degree of authority than before, effectively leaving the responsibility of ensuring the defence of the Marches to them alone. He became quite rich thanks to the taxes he levied on the merchants who travelled through his lands on the Silk Road, and the caravans which he himself financed. The complaints from the other Marcher Lords fell on deaf ears when Godfrey III was King of Jerusalem, largely thanks to the huge sums of money which he made from the feudal dues and taxes Julien had to pay on his profits. But when Queen Lucie came to the throne and heard the same, she summoned Julien to Jerusalem and berated him in front of the court. She decreed that he would have to pay out of his own pockets for the maintenance of a professional military force to guard the frontier, by way of compensation for neglecting the defences of the Marches (although in the end most of their financing came out of the money that Julien had previously been paying to the Crown). Previously this had been left solely to the Marcher Lords and their men, who raided deep into Mesopotamia and occasionally even reached as far afield as Persia. Sometimes referred to ‘Incessants’, they were more commonly known as ‘Rascailles’ and carried on constant warfare through the generations of the Marcher families against the various nomadic groups who lived near Edessa. Now, many of them were inducted into the ‘Compaignes Frontieres’, professional military formations comprised mainly of cavalry, who were divided into three companies which were based at Tell Gouron, Amida, and Mardin, the latter two cities having been retained by the Kingdom of Jerusalem despite Shahrukh’s conquest of Mosul and the surrounding areas in the early 15th century. The company at Tell Gouron comprised around 600 men (400 knights and serjeants, 100 men-at-arms, and 100 archers), whilst those at Amida and Mardin were around 400 strong (a little over half of whom were mounted). A fourth company was formed shortly after in the north of the County of Edessa, when the local Armenians asked for and received royal assent for raising a standing force to protect themselves against raids. Only around 200 strong, they were drawn almost entirely from the Armenian population of the County and did not actually operate in the Edessan Marches, which were only in the east of the County. This company was also noted to be under the direct control of the Crown instead of the Marcher Lords or the Count of Edessa.
Julien passed in 1420 and left his lands to his son, Huidelon Boutellievre, who still ruled when Aylwin took the throne of Jerusalem. Having inherited his wealth and been raised in the usual manner of a noble, he had more of the soldier than the merchant in him, compounded by the torments he had received from being the son of a man who had made his fortune through mercantilism.
When the border raids became worse following the death of Shahrukh, Huidelon was ordered to improve the border defences by Aylwin and given a small sum to help him achieve their betterment. Uncomplaining about being given far less than he needed to pay for the improvement of the existing fortifications, he drew upon his inherited fortune and undertook his task with admirable efficiency. Furthermore, he personally undertook several largescale raids in the 1440s and 1450s, comprising of several thousand men each and even going so far as to lay siege to Mosul twice. This had the effect of devastating Mesopotamia to such an extent that Shahrukh’s second son, Quatham, the Shahrukhid ruler of Mesopotamia, mounted retaliatory raids into Syria in the 1440s with forces that numbered in the tens of thousands. He succeeded in taking Amida in 1445 during one of these raids, but was prevented from making any further gains due to more pressing domestic concerns, as he had been fighting a civil war against his elder brother Khâmûsh since seizing Mesopotamia for himself in 1438, only six years after the death of their father. This meant that Huidelon was able to retake Amida the following year, whilst no other of Quatham’s raids was able to take a major Edessan fortification as he was forced to withdraw prematurely each time. Quatham was eventually caught and executed by his brother in 1449, but by then Mesopotamia had splintered into half a dozen smaller states which would only be brought back into the Shahrukhid Empire in the late 1450s and 1460s thanks to the fact that Quatham was not the only brother whom Khâmûsh and his successors were forced to fight for the throne of the Empire. Large raids across the Edessan frontier therefore continued until the end of the 1450s, causing a series of terrible famines on the eastern side of the border that devastated the population and were only ended when Khâmûsh was able to seize control.
Huidelon continued to rule Tell Gouron until his death from pneumonia in 1467, having become fatally ill after he was caught in a storm whilst riding in the north of the Edessan Marches. His lands passed to his adopted son, Fioriano, an Italian who had come to Edessa after hearing the usual tales of heroic deeds and had risen up in Huidelon’s court and on the battlefield. Eventually he had been adopted by Huidelon and taken the surname Boutellievre himself.
King Aylwin, however, paid but little heed to Edessa, passing the occasional decree concerning the Marches or sending some funds or men to support the defences there. His most kingly moment was his participation in the 1448 North African Crusade, one of the first of the crusades which were undertaken in North Africa in the 15th century and coincided with a rise in spirituality and devotion in Europe in the latter half of the 1400s. By the time of the crusade Aylwin was 74 years old (having been born in 1374 when his father was 33) and as such took no personal part in the fighting. The crusade was made up mostly of Sicilian (8,000 men), Papal (2,000 men) and Jerusalemite (5,000 men) forces, whilst the fleet was mostly Sicilian (100 ships) and Jerusalemite (60 ships). They defeated a Rahmaani fleet in the Gulf of Sidra before proceeding west along the coast of Tripolitania, taking most of the few remaining coastal cities not already in Sicilian hands, before eventually reaching Algeria and proceeding inland (after again taking most of the coastal cities) with the intention of taking Constantine. The Rahmanni Dynasty, named after its founder Ya Rahmaan, had ruled the remains of Moslem Tunisia and Libya since the collapse of the Almohads (helped in no small part by King Arias II’s campaigns in North Africa) at the end of the 14th century. However, the loss of coastal Tripolitania, where so much of their strength had been concentrated, led to their complete collapse in the wake of the crusade. Now, apart from the Berber tribes which controlled much of North Africa away from the coasts, the only remaining Moslem realm north of the Sahara was the Jaleel Dynasty based in Morocco and Algeria, named for their founder `Abdul-Jaleel. They succeeded in forcing the crusaders back from Constantine by cutting their supply lines, although they failed to completely destroy the crusader army, the vast majority of which escaped to friendly territory by the coast. The Christian gains were all absorbed into the Sicilian realm and the crusade was widely lauded as a success despite their failure to take Constantine. Aylwin returned to Jerusalem in 1449 and passed away in his sleep the following year.
Thanks I'm only going to be able to update occasionally I'm afraid, maybe once every two weeks, give or take a week. I'm staying abroad right now and have a new job, so pretty busy haha
EDIT: And when did we get a like button?!
I'm only going to be able to update occasionally I'm afraid, maybe once every two weeks, give or take a week. I'm staying abroad right now and have a new job, so pretty busy hahaEDIT: And when did we get a like button?!
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Thanks
EDIT: And when did we get a like button?!
That's life for everyone. It gives me the excuse to re-read it again.
Pre-contact Vinland
I'm sorry this has taken so long to get out, to be honest I could have kept writing but I wanted to get it posted. If I've made any mistakes with the foreign names (grammar etc) or even if you just have any suggestions or comments, please do post! Also, I forgot to thank Diego last time for suggesting that I continue the timeline! Thank you!
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Pre-contact Vinland
After half a century of Norse settlement, Vinland was beginning to look decidedly Scandinavian. The Norse there had spread rapidly across the islands, slaughtering or enslaving the native populace which had found itself crippled by the diseases the Northmen had brought. Indeed, the martial strength of the skælings in Vinland had been virtually destroyed and only a few independent bands continued to roam, hiding away from the Norse settlements and occasionally striking at the invaders from the depths of the forests.
The Úlfr Saga, the only complete Vinlandic saga to survive from this period, recounted the leaving of Greenland and the early days of the Norse in Vinland, before ending with his death at the hands of a shieldmaiden whose husband Úlfr had abandoned to the skælings. By the time of the end of the Saga in the early 1430s, the Norse had achieved military dominance in Vinland, after fighting the Battle of the Ford of Djúprgata (‘deep way/passage’) in the late 1420s, in which an ‘innumerable’ army of skælings advanced on Mannafallsbrekka before being ambushed and decisively defeated as they attempted to Ford the River Þorn. The Vinlanders lost only a few dozen men, whilst the skælings supposedly lost many hundreds. After the battle, it was reported that some of the skælings departed Vinland and journeyed west to the continental mainland (as opposed to the Vinlandic mainland). Following them brought the Vinlanders into their first real contact with the inhabitants of the true mainland, which eventually led to the beginning of the Vinlandic custom of the Rannsakandi in the 1440s, in which they would undertake Rannsakingar (raids, literally ‘ransacks’) against the mainland for plunder and slaves. It became a custom among the Vinlanders to take concubines (referred to as ‘friðlur’) from among the skælings in this way, so that even the lowest Vinlandic farmer was said to have a Norse wife and at least two concubines as well. It should be noted that every Vinlandic male and a fair number of the females (in the guise of shieldmaidens), participated in warfare and raiding, due to population shortages and the necessity of fighting. It was also not unheard of (although exceedingly rare) for a shieldmaiden to take concubines, although it was generally looked down upon and those that engaged in the practice were often viewed as in some way corrupted or sinister. For instance, the shieldmaiden who reportedly killed Úlfr, although described in a sympathetic light in the earliest written form of the Úlfr Saga (dated to the 1450s), was rewritten as a villain and described as having a number of male concubines in later versions.
Thanks to the issue of these concubines, the Norse settlements began to swiftly expand, with the first generation of Álfir, as they were called, reaching maturity in the later 1450s. Their name, ‘Álfir’ meaning ‘Elves’, was originally an insult used against them by the Norse who likened them to so many elves running about undertaking various evils and mischiefs. However, it became the name of their class after ‘Álfir’ lost the insulting connotations originally associated with the word and was cooped by the members of the class themselves. With such methods of reproduction, Norse Vinland quickly developed a highly stratified society which had four main classes.
The first and highest class was that of the Grænlandar, usually shortened to Grænar, which consisted of those who had sailed from Greenland and their direct descendants. To be considered a part of this class, both of your parents or all of your grandparents had to be full-blooded Norse. Already by the 1450s the Grænar class was finding itself increasingly outnumbered and starting to become increasingly uneasy with the rise of those with skæling blood to positions of authority. Secondly came the Býthukir, those who had at least one Norse parent and were the offspring of those of the Norse settlers who had taken skæling wives (who were generally referred to as ‘Eljar’ or ‘rival wives’). Although they were often looked down upon by the Grænar, they were considered freemen by law, with the same rights and privileges as their full-blooded Norse kinsmen. Together, the Grænar and the Býthukir were collectively referred to as the Vinlandar. Next came the children of the friðlur, the Álfir, who were obliged to vote (for example at a Þing) according to the wishes of the Vinlandr head of the family. Furthermore, when an Álfr died without direct descendants, his property would revert to said head of the family, despite the wishes and the contents of whatever will the Álfr may have left behind. Fourth were the Þrælar, those slaves who had been taken during the various Rannsakingar and wars undertaken against the skælings. Þrælar were not free and had to obey their masters in all things, and were they to be killed the case would be treated as destruction of property rather than outright murder. Þrælar that were freed were simply referred to as skælings again, and were given similar privileges as the Álfr and generally grouped into the same class, with their former master taking the place of head of the family. Skælings that came and settled in the Norse settlements were also treated in this way, being ‘adopted’ into a local clan. It ought to be noted that skælings were referred to by the Norse of the time as skælingjar.
The law-making bodies of Vinland at this time were the two Þing which met at Garðar (the GarðaÞing) and Mannafallsbrekka (the MannafallsbrekkaÞing). They would take place on large mounds of raised earth where tents would be erected whilst a Þing was in progress. Each met annually and had supreme authority over the laws in their respective territories. The Þing were assemblies of all the free men and women who were resident within the administrative borders of their local Þing. Ddisputes would be arbitrated, laws written, politics decided, trade undertaken, chieftains elected, and large religious ceremonies undertaken. Large Rannsakingar would also be planned at the Þing, where their leaders would be elected (either from among the chieftains or their appointees), routes planned, and provisions made for the supplying of ships, men, and supplies.
As mentioned, chieftains (‘valdr’) were elected at the Þing, there being five chieftains among the Vinlanders, three in Garðar and two in Mannafallsbrekka. Generally these chieftaincies were held by the heads of the five most powerful clans, but it was not unheard of for another man to take the title, or for members from the same clan to be elected to more than one.
Apart from the Þing, Vinland was dominated by clans, which provided protection for members and occasionally fought against one another in bloodfeuds. There were five primary clans in Vinland, the Úlfar (descendants of Úlfr Jǫrundsson, his kinsmen and his supporters),Óleifir (descendants of Óleifr, his kinsmen and his supporters), Vigdísir, Gríming, and Þurjar, although the Gríming and Þurjar were substantially smaller than the other three and generally played second fiddle to the others. Alliances between the clans were ever shifting, although the enmity between the Þurjar and the Vigdísir was known to be particularly fierce and it was considered a once in a lifetime event when they allied with one another. Still, feuds were usually contained thanks to arbitration between the clans at the Þing and the death penalty imposed (first introduced when the Norse had been Christianised) for a killing ruled as unlawful.
Society in Vinland became increasingly skælicised with the increasing population of mixed blood Vinlanders. Tobacco had been swiftly adopted by the Vinlanders, as the skælings of the region were reported to carry large tobacco pouches for easy trade, as well as for smoking regularly and for ceremonies such as the sealing of pacts and the ending of trade negotiations. Tobacco was smoked in wooden and stone pipes decorated with a mixture of skæling and Norse symbols and designs. Items of skæling dress had also become more common, such as the adoption of some skæling styles in the cut of clothing, as well as the introduction of feathers. Here the Vinlanders actually began using the item to a greater extent than the skælings, such that they began wearing feathered cloaks (although usually mixed with fur), decorating their helmets with feather crowns, and attaching them to their weapons and shields. Furs became an important part of the Vinlander attire, more so than they had been for the Norse in Greenland, for here furred creatures were to be found in easy abundance. With influence from skæling fashion, the Vinlanders came to adopt fur and feathers as their primary clothing materials, alongside leather which remained as a staple from the old days (although actually more common). Linen was relegated to undergarments for the wealthy, whilst wool was looked down on as rustic and unrefined (Vinland’s sheep herds had grown large and produce an impressive quantity of wool), with the effect that wool was worn almost exclusively by Vinlander shepherds and skælings at the bottom of the Vinlandic society.
The Vinlanders had one great advantage over the skælings in regards to warfare: iron. With armour and weapons made of metal, as opposed to relying on stone, the Vinlanders had the advantage in melee combat and as such were able to come out on top whenever they were prepared and the fight was on even terms. But weapons had to be replaced and armour repaired, and the trade with Iceland (the Greenland colony not having enough to fulfil Vinland’s growing demands at that time) was only intermittent at best. Only four successful expeditions to Iceland are known to have taken place in the first 50 years of the Vinland settlement. Of these, all lost at least two ships. With such meagre trade with Europe, the Vinlanders were forced to rely upon bog iron to maintain their equipment and tools. This was found at a number of locations across Vinland and large parties regularly went out to gather the precious ore. At first, these were heavily armed bands that fought skirmishes with the skælings, but after the Battle of the Ford of Djúprgata these were increasingly less military in character.
Due to Greenland’s geographic isolation and the fact that many of the Vinlanders were descended from poorer Greenlandic families, the arms and armour utilised among the Vinlanders were primitive when compared to those of Europe. The wealthiest had chainmail armour, but due to the rarity of iron no examples of these were actually produced in Vinland until sometime later. Most Vinlanders fought whilst wearing their usual clothing, with perhaps the addition of an extra layer of leather or padding. Due to the cold temperatures of the region, their winter clothing could prove surprisingly resistant to blows thanks to its thickness. The Vinlanders relied on much the same military technology as had their Viking ancestors, most warriors being armed with a spear, shield, and axe or seaxe. Swords were about as rare as chainmail, and there were a few other weapons such as clubs and atgeirs. Many warriors also carried a bow, useful as they were for both hunting and fighting. Many weapons were influenced by skæling styles, with clubs becoming prominent (usually fitted with metal spikes or studs) and short axes in the style of the tomahawk becoming just as popular as the great two-handed Dane axe (the advantage being they could be used with shields). Shields were of great importance to the Vinlanders, being round shields in the traditional Norse design, made of wood with a metal boss and often decorated with Vinlandic artwork and symbols. The shieldwall tactic was often utilised by the Vinlanders, as the skælings frequently attacked with ranged weapons (throwing spears, arrows, tomahawks, stones, etc) once they realised just how effective the Vinlanders were at melee fighting. Ambushes were often the order of the day, to the effect that the Vinlanders valued their shields even more than the average soldier of the time. Of course, after failing to penetrate the shield wall on so many occasions, the skælings of the north-eastern forests came to adopt the same tactic. Shields were already relatively common among them, but now they became a necessity for every warrior. Nevertheless, the Vinlanders were able to maintain military superiority against the tribes of Markland and Hæðland (hill-land [roughly, New Brunswick and northern New England]), most especially as they were able to pick and choose where and when they fought. Only one Rannsakingar before the arrival of the Leonese was recorded as having completely failed, when the skæling chieftain referred to by the Vinlanders as Hokinrazikǫrtr (who was a member of the Vígadeildar, those skælings who lived in the Vígadeild [i.e. Iroquoians of the St Lawrence Valley]) ambushed a Vinlandic raiding party in the Battle of Flúðir, after luring them into an attack on what they thought was a relatively defenceless village. Despite the Vinlanders forming a shieldwall and desperately attempting to fight their way to their ships, the Vígadeildar overwhelmed them and slaughtered all those who had gone ashore, even succeeding in burning one of the longships. Primarily recorded in the Sokka Saga, nearly 150 Vinlanders were killed, among whom was the chieftain Skáldþorfinnr, the warriors Sighvatr, Hafrbiólfr, Sokki Álǫfson (for whom the saga was named), Jótungráfeldr and Kleykir, and the shieldmaidens Sjóna (who warned against attacking the village) and Ingibiǫrg Bekkjarbót. Many thousands of skælings were reported as participating in the battle. However, the decentralised nature of the skæling tribes in the region, combined with the low populations of those in the colder areas (i.e. the Beothuk, Thule, Innu), meant that they largely failed to form a successful counter to the Rannsakingar during this period. The Blóðvatn (Blood River/Lake [St Lawrence River]) came to play a large part in the Rannsakingar, to the effect that the Vinlanders became regular travellers on its waters, bringing an end to much of the skæling riverine traffic in the region and devastating the Vígadeildar who lived along its banks. The skælings fought several largescale battles in their canoes against the longships of the invaders, but were unable to decisively defeat any of the Vinlandic raiding fleets during this period.
Concerning the religion of the Vinlanders, it may be said that folk Catholicism remained a strong influence within their society, despite a general distrust of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, brought on by the experiences of their people in Greenland. Most of them retained their faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church, with their own local beliefs and superstitions of the kind that were commonplace among the peoples of Christendom (and still remain in many places). They first consecrated their own priests during the GarðaÞing of 1442, where two men were elected, one from among the Úlfar and the other from the Vigdísir clan. The MannafallsbrekkaÞing followed suit and elected two of their own the following year, both from the Þurjar clan. Theological disputes abounded and a blood-feud that claimed nearly two dozen lives was recorded in the sagas as having occurred in the early 1460s. Fought between the Óleifir and the Vigdísir, with the Þurjaraiding the Óleifir, the dispute was over whether or not Saint Joseph had had a wife before the Virgin Mary (the Óleifir insisting that he had and the Vigdísir that he hadn’t). An important issue due to the commonality of the veneration of Saint Joseph among the Vinlanders, as evidenced by the first church in Garða (previously private dwellings and other structures were used on an ad hoc basis) being named Saint Joseph’s Holy Church and remaining for decades as the seat of the Catholic Church in Vinland. Later the Church of Saint Nicholas (patron saint of sailors), a larger structure that was built to meet the needs of the growing population, became the seat of the Church in Vinland and was the first to be constructed at the order of the priests.
Besides Catholicism, the traditional religion of the Beothuk, involving a mixture of animism and belief in spirits, spread among the Vinlanders. Most popular among the Býthukir, the Álfir generally adopted Catholicism as they were eager to be accepted by the higher levels of Vinlandic society, especially hoping to curry favour with the Grænar. The beliefs of the skælings became mixed with the Norse traditions of the Vinlanders, so that within two generations the pagan Vinlanders held beliefs that were radically different from those of the skælings on the mainland. A syncretism between Norse and skæling beliefs thereby came into being which involved the importation of Norse folklore into the skæling belief system, the addition of many mythical creatures and tales and the conflation of others. Large pagan gatherings are evidenced to have occurred among the Vinlanders at least as early as the 1430s and a priesthood was in existence by the end of the decade. Indeed, the rise of paganism in Vinland may well have provided the impetus for the elections of the first Catholic priests in 1442.
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Pre-contact Vinland
After half a century of Norse settlement, Vinland was beginning to look decidedly Scandinavian. The Norse there had spread rapidly across the islands, slaughtering or enslaving the native populace which had found itself crippled by the diseases the Northmen had brought. Indeed, the martial strength of the skælings in Vinland had been virtually destroyed and only a few independent bands continued to roam, hiding away from the Norse settlements and occasionally striking at the invaders from the depths of the forests.
The Úlfr Saga, the only complete Vinlandic saga to survive from this period, recounted the leaving of Greenland and the early days of the Norse in Vinland, before ending with his death at the hands of a shieldmaiden whose husband Úlfr had abandoned to the skælings. By the time of the end of the Saga in the early 1430s, the Norse had achieved military dominance in Vinland, after fighting the Battle of the Ford of Djúprgata (‘deep way/passage’) in the late 1420s, in which an ‘innumerable’ army of skælings advanced on Mannafallsbrekka before being ambushed and decisively defeated as they attempted to Ford the River Þorn. The Vinlanders lost only a few dozen men, whilst the skælings supposedly lost many hundreds. After the battle, it was reported that some of the skælings departed Vinland and journeyed west to the continental mainland (as opposed to the Vinlandic mainland). Following them brought the Vinlanders into their first real contact with the inhabitants of the true mainland, which eventually led to the beginning of the Vinlandic custom of the Rannsakandi in the 1440s, in which they would undertake Rannsakingar (raids, literally ‘ransacks’) against the mainland for plunder and slaves. It became a custom among the Vinlanders to take concubines (referred to as ‘friðlur’) from among the skælings in this way, so that even the lowest Vinlandic farmer was said to have a Norse wife and at least two concubines as well. It should be noted that every Vinlandic male and a fair number of the females (in the guise of shieldmaidens), participated in warfare and raiding, due to population shortages and the necessity of fighting. It was also not unheard of (although exceedingly rare) for a shieldmaiden to take concubines, although it was generally looked down upon and those that engaged in the practice were often viewed as in some way corrupted or sinister. For instance, the shieldmaiden who reportedly killed Úlfr, although described in a sympathetic light in the earliest written form of the Úlfr Saga (dated to the 1450s), was rewritten as a villain and described as having a number of male concubines in later versions.
Thanks to the issue of these concubines, the Norse settlements began to swiftly expand, with the first generation of Álfir, as they were called, reaching maturity in the later 1450s. Their name, ‘Álfir’ meaning ‘Elves’, was originally an insult used against them by the Norse who likened them to so many elves running about undertaking various evils and mischiefs. However, it became the name of their class after ‘Álfir’ lost the insulting connotations originally associated with the word and was cooped by the members of the class themselves. With such methods of reproduction, Norse Vinland quickly developed a highly stratified society which had four main classes.
The first and highest class was that of the Grænlandar, usually shortened to Grænar, which consisted of those who had sailed from Greenland and their direct descendants. To be considered a part of this class, both of your parents or all of your grandparents had to be full-blooded Norse. Already by the 1450s the Grænar class was finding itself increasingly outnumbered and starting to become increasingly uneasy with the rise of those with skæling blood to positions of authority. Secondly came the Býthukir, those who had at least one Norse parent and were the offspring of those of the Norse settlers who had taken skæling wives (who were generally referred to as ‘Eljar’ or ‘rival wives’). Although they were often looked down upon by the Grænar, they were considered freemen by law, with the same rights and privileges as their full-blooded Norse kinsmen. Together, the Grænar and the Býthukir were collectively referred to as the Vinlandar. Next came the children of the friðlur, the Álfir, who were obliged to vote (for example at a Þing) according to the wishes of the Vinlandr head of the family. Furthermore, when an Álfr died without direct descendants, his property would revert to said head of the family, despite the wishes and the contents of whatever will the Álfr may have left behind. Fourth were the Þrælar, those slaves who had been taken during the various Rannsakingar and wars undertaken against the skælings. Þrælar were not free and had to obey their masters in all things, and were they to be killed the case would be treated as destruction of property rather than outright murder. Þrælar that were freed were simply referred to as skælings again, and were given similar privileges as the Álfr and generally grouped into the same class, with their former master taking the place of head of the family. Skælings that came and settled in the Norse settlements were also treated in this way, being ‘adopted’ into a local clan. It ought to be noted that skælings were referred to by the Norse of the time as skælingjar.
The law-making bodies of Vinland at this time were the two Þing which met at Garðar (the GarðaÞing) and Mannafallsbrekka (the MannafallsbrekkaÞing). They would take place on large mounds of raised earth where tents would be erected whilst a Þing was in progress. Each met annually and had supreme authority over the laws in their respective territories. The Þing were assemblies of all the free men and women who were resident within the administrative borders of their local Þing. Ddisputes would be arbitrated, laws written, politics decided, trade undertaken, chieftains elected, and large religious ceremonies undertaken. Large Rannsakingar would also be planned at the Þing, where their leaders would be elected (either from among the chieftains or their appointees), routes planned, and provisions made for the supplying of ships, men, and supplies.
As mentioned, chieftains (‘valdr’) were elected at the Þing, there being five chieftains among the Vinlanders, three in Garðar and two in Mannafallsbrekka. Generally these chieftaincies were held by the heads of the five most powerful clans, but it was not unheard of for another man to take the title, or for members from the same clan to be elected to more than one.
Apart from the Þing, Vinland was dominated by clans, which provided protection for members and occasionally fought against one another in bloodfeuds. There were five primary clans in Vinland, the Úlfar (descendants of Úlfr Jǫrundsson, his kinsmen and his supporters),Óleifir (descendants of Óleifr, his kinsmen and his supporters), Vigdísir, Gríming, and Þurjar, although the Gríming and Þurjar were substantially smaller than the other three and generally played second fiddle to the others. Alliances between the clans were ever shifting, although the enmity between the Þurjar and the Vigdísir was known to be particularly fierce and it was considered a once in a lifetime event when they allied with one another. Still, feuds were usually contained thanks to arbitration between the clans at the Þing and the death penalty imposed (first introduced when the Norse had been Christianised) for a killing ruled as unlawful.
Society in Vinland became increasingly skælicised with the increasing population of mixed blood Vinlanders. Tobacco had been swiftly adopted by the Vinlanders, as the skælings of the region were reported to carry large tobacco pouches for easy trade, as well as for smoking regularly and for ceremonies such as the sealing of pacts and the ending of trade negotiations. Tobacco was smoked in wooden and stone pipes decorated with a mixture of skæling and Norse symbols and designs. Items of skæling dress had also become more common, such as the adoption of some skæling styles in the cut of clothing, as well as the introduction of feathers. Here the Vinlanders actually began using the item to a greater extent than the skælings, such that they began wearing feathered cloaks (although usually mixed with fur), decorating their helmets with feather crowns, and attaching them to their weapons and shields. Furs became an important part of the Vinlander attire, more so than they had been for the Norse in Greenland, for here furred creatures were to be found in easy abundance. With influence from skæling fashion, the Vinlanders came to adopt fur and feathers as their primary clothing materials, alongside leather which remained as a staple from the old days (although actually more common). Linen was relegated to undergarments for the wealthy, whilst wool was looked down on as rustic and unrefined (Vinland’s sheep herds had grown large and produce an impressive quantity of wool), with the effect that wool was worn almost exclusively by Vinlander shepherds and skælings at the bottom of the Vinlandic society.
The Vinlanders had one great advantage over the skælings in regards to warfare: iron. With armour and weapons made of metal, as opposed to relying on stone, the Vinlanders had the advantage in melee combat and as such were able to come out on top whenever they were prepared and the fight was on even terms. But weapons had to be replaced and armour repaired, and the trade with Iceland (the Greenland colony not having enough to fulfil Vinland’s growing demands at that time) was only intermittent at best. Only four successful expeditions to Iceland are known to have taken place in the first 50 years of the Vinland settlement. Of these, all lost at least two ships. With such meagre trade with Europe, the Vinlanders were forced to rely upon bog iron to maintain their equipment and tools. This was found at a number of locations across Vinland and large parties regularly went out to gather the precious ore. At first, these were heavily armed bands that fought skirmishes with the skælings, but after the Battle of the Ford of Djúprgata these were increasingly less military in character.
Due to Greenland’s geographic isolation and the fact that many of the Vinlanders were descended from poorer Greenlandic families, the arms and armour utilised among the Vinlanders were primitive when compared to those of Europe. The wealthiest had chainmail armour, but due to the rarity of iron no examples of these were actually produced in Vinland until sometime later. Most Vinlanders fought whilst wearing their usual clothing, with perhaps the addition of an extra layer of leather or padding. Due to the cold temperatures of the region, their winter clothing could prove surprisingly resistant to blows thanks to its thickness. The Vinlanders relied on much the same military technology as had their Viking ancestors, most warriors being armed with a spear, shield, and axe or seaxe. Swords were about as rare as chainmail, and there were a few other weapons such as clubs and atgeirs. Many warriors also carried a bow, useful as they were for both hunting and fighting. Many weapons were influenced by skæling styles, with clubs becoming prominent (usually fitted with metal spikes or studs) and short axes in the style of the tomahawk becoming just as popular as the great two-handed Dane axe (the advantage being they could be used with shields). Shields were of great importance to the Vinlanders, being round shields in the traditional Norse design, made of wood with a metal boss and often decorated with Vinlandic artwork and symbols. The shieldwall tactic was often utilised by the Vinlanders, as the skælings frequently attacked with ranged weapons (throwing spears, arrows, tomahawks, stones, etc) once they realised just how effective the Vinlanders were at melee fighting. Ambushes were often the order of the day, to the effect that the Vinlanders valued their shields even more than the average soldier of the time. Of course, after failing to penetrate the shield wall on so many occasions, the skælings of the north-eastern forests came to adopt the same tactic. Shields were already relatively common among them, but now they became a necessity for every warrior. Nevertheless, the Vinlanders were able to maintain military superiority against the tribes of Markland and Hæðland (hill-land [roughly, New Brunswick and northern New England]), most especially as they were able to pick and choose where and when they fought. Only one Rannsakingar before the arrival of the Leonese was recorded as having completely failed, when the skæling chieftain referred to by the Vinlanders as Hokinrazikǫrtr (who was a member of the Vígadeildar, those skælings who lived in the Vígadeild [i.e. Iroquoians of the St Lawrence Valley]) ambushed a Vinlandic raiding party in the Battle of Flúðir, after luring them into an attack on what they thought was a relatively defenceless village. Despite the Vinlanders forming a shieldwall and desperately attempting to fight their way to their ships, the Vígadeildar overwhelmed them and slaughtered all those who had gone ashore, even succeeding in burning one of the longships. Primarily recorded in the Sokka Saga, nearly 150 Vinlanders were killed, among whom was the chieftain Skáldþorfinnr, the warriors Sighvatr, Hafrbiólfr, Sokki Álǫfson (for whom the saga was named), Jótungráfeldr and Kleykir, and the shieldmaidens Sjóna (who warned against attacking the village) and Ingibiǫrg Bekkjarbót. Many thousands of skælings were reported as participating in the battle. However, the decentralised nature of the skæling tribes in the region, combined with the low populations of those in the colder areas (i.e. the Beothuk, Thule, Innu), meant that they largely failed to form a successful counter to the Rannsakingar during this period. The Blóðvatn (Blood River/Lake [St Lawrence River]) came to play a large part in the Rannsakingar, to the effect that the Vinlanders became regular travellers on its waters, bringing an end to much of the skæling riverine traffic in the region and devastating the Vígadeildar who lived along its banks. The skælings fought several largescale battles in their canoes against the longships of the invaders, but were unable to decisively defeat any of the Vinlandic raiding fleets during this period.
Concerning the religion of the Vinlanders, it may be said that folk Catholicism remained a strong influence within their society, despite a general distrust of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, brought on by the experiences of their people in Greenland. Most of them retained their faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church, with their own local beliefs and superstitions of the kind that were commonplace among the peoples of Christendom (and still remain in many places). They first consecrated their own priests during the GarðaÞing of 1442, where two men were elected, one from among the Úlfar and the other from the Vigdísir clan. The MannafallsbrekkaÞing followed suit and elected two of their own the following year, both from the Þurjar clan. Theological disputes abounded and a blood-feud that claimed nearly two dozen lives was recorded in the sagas as having occurred in the early 1460s. Fought between the Óleifir and the Vigdísir, with the Þurjaraiding the Óleifir, the dispute was over whether or not Saint Joseph had had a wife before the Virgin Mary (the Óleifir insisting that he had and the Vigdísir that he hadn’t). An important issue due to the commonality of the veneration of Saint Joseph among the Vinlanders, as evidenced by the first church in Garða (previously private dwellings and other structures were used on an ad hoc basis) being named Saint Joseph’s Holy Church and remaining for decades as the seat of the Catholic Church in Vinland. Later the Church of Saint Nicholas (patron saint of sailors), a larger structure that was built to meet the needs of the growing population, became the seat of the Church in Vinland and was the first to be constructed at the order of the priests.
Besides Catholicism, the traditional religion of the Beothuk, involving a mixture of animism and belief in spirits, spread among the Vinlanders. Most popular among the Býthukir, the Álfir generally adopted Catholicism as they were eager to be accepted by the higher levels of Vinlandic society, especially hoping to curry favour with the Grænar. The beliefs of the skælings became mixed with the Norse traditions of the Vinlanders, so that within two generations the pagan Vinlanders held beliefs that were radically different from those of the skælings on the mainland. A syncretism between Norse and skæling beliefs thereby came into being which involved the importation of Norse folklore into the skæling belief system, the addition of many mythical creatures and tales and the conflation of others. Large pagan gatherings are evidenced to have occurred among the Vinlanders at least as early as the 1430s and a priesthood was in existence by the end of the decade. Indeed, the rise of paganism in Vinland may well have provided the impetus for the elections of the first Catholic priests in 1442.
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Caravans and Sea-lanes
Caravans and Sea-lanes
The Islamic world had seen a dramatic reorientation in the centuries after the seizure of Damascus by the crusaders in 1148, which had taken the land connection between the Middle East and Africa out of the hands of the Moslems. With Damascus in their hands, the Latins had been able to project power eastward in Syria, ensuring that any Moslems who wished to make the journey from Persia to Africa had to brave the dangers of the Arabian desert and travel among the Bedouin caravans that plied the winding trade routes through the desert sands. With luck they would be able to slip through the line of Jerusalemite strongholds constructed between the Dead Sea in the centre of the old Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Red Sea to the south. The line of fortresses had been initially started during the reign of King Godfrey II during his castle building campaign in the Sinai during the late 1190s, as a way of securing the major desert trade routes that passed into the peninsular so as to limit Bedouin and Moslem incursions into the territory. The line had been reinforced during the reign of King Joscelin (r. 1247-1258), to secure the Egypt-Palestine passage that was so important for ensuring that support from his allies in Egypt could reach the Kingdom of Jerusalem proper. These fortresses, when properly manned, were then powerful and well placed enough to end all largescale illegal movement into the Sinai, only small bands of smugglers continuing to operate without the King’s consent. Moslem caravans were then often required to pay heavy tolls to pass along the roads, although the amount varied greatly throughout the following centuries.
Even making it through this fortified territory after paying their dues or braving the King’s justice and placing faith upon the smugglers, Moslem travellers would find themselves separated from their brethren in North Africa by the highly populous Nile Valley, with all its settlements, fortresses, and armies. The crossing points of the Nile were among the most heavily guarded locations in Latin Egypt, making an attempt to force a crossing an impossibility with the forces a trade caravan would be able to muster. With exorbitant taxes placed upon Moslems in Agyptischordenstaad, which forced many traders to unload their goods in the border towns of Agyptischordenstaad from where Christian traders would take them to Alexandria an onto the rest of Christendom, paying for a crossing was only feasible for most in Makuria. But to avoid the prying eyes of officers of the crown who enforced customs regulations and prevented the passage of undesirables, further travel southward was necessary, through the Eastern Desert. There the Beja peoples lived in a state of endemic warfare which they carried on against the Alodians, the Beja Kingdoms having been dismantled and (at least tenuously) absorbed by the late 1430s. Having been conquered by the Makurians in the first decade of the 13th century and subsequently regaining their independence in the late 14th century, the Beja were proud of their wars against the various larger nations of the Nile who attempted to subdue them from time to time. The near constant fighting which occurred there, even between the various Beja tribes themselves, meant that the region was horrifically unsafe to travel through. This was compounded by the fact the Beja were a mix of Moslems, Christians, and Pagans (with the latter being the smallest group of the three by the latter half of the 14th century), so that one could never quite be sure if a band of Beja people were going to treat you with deep-seated mistrust or simply outright butcher those in your caravan.
After navigating that patchwork of warring tribesmen and freedom fighters, a Moslem traveller would reach the relative safety of the Sultanate of Bahr negash (‘kingdom of the sea’). This Moslem realm was centred on the Eritrean Highlands and their forests, and lay between the Red Sea in the east and the Mareb River in the west, although they did occasionally succeed in extending their power further inland. Further to the south lay the semi-autonomous Emirate of Adal within the larger Sultanate of Ifat. Ifat had long battled the Empire of Abyssinia, the primary successor state of the Kingdom of Aksum, a major Abyssinian invasion of Ifat having been repulsed as recently as the early 15th century. Both Bahr negash and Ifat were comparatively safe for Moslem travellers, so long as they were not embroiled in one of the frequent bitter and bloody wars they both regularly fought against Abyssinia. Travelling further, around the Horn of Africa, required one to stay relatively near the coast, away from the Somali and Oromo tribes who roamed the interior. Bordering Ifat’s southwestern border approximately halfway between Berbera in the west and Mait in the east was the Sultanate of al-Qarn (the ‘Sultanate of the Horn’). Al-Qarn has been founded in the mid-13th century, after the Latin conquest of Egypt in the 1170s had less to a several waves of Moslems leaving the country, the majority of whom came to settle in the Moslem states which littered the East African Coast. Their effects had been wide reaching, for instance they were popularly ascribed credit for halting an Abyssinian invasion of Ifat and subsequently made up a significant portion of the Sultan’s army. On the Horn itself, however, they had come as conquerors and after defeating the forces of the Wasangali Sultanate they had created the Sultanate of al-Qarn in its place, with themselves as a ruling class who governed the Somali lower classes. Although remnants of the Warsangali continued to raid al-Qarn and plot to retake the throne, this resistance largely came to an end in the early years of the 14th century. Al-Qarn went on to expand beyond the Maakhir Coast, reaching the border of Ifat in the west and taking the city of Hafun (which subsequently became the capital) in the east. However, their conquests earned the ire of the northern Somali clans who began to combine into the Ogadeni Imamate. The position of Imam rotated between the hereditary heads (each of whom was an Emir) of three (later four) smaller clans within the Ogadeni upon the death of each Imam. They were initially noticed as serious threat to al-Qarn in the 1340s, when they launched an invasion of the Sultanate, defeated an army sent to stop their rampage (possibly after Somali contingents within the army defected) and sacked several cities culminating with the city of Lāsqoray which had previously served as the capital of the Wasangali. Once a city was taken, the Ogadeni would slaughter the majority of the inhabitants, most especially any Egyptians they could lay their hands upon. Although the Ogandeni were eventually forced back, the western regions of the Sultanate were almost entirely depopulated of Egyptian settlers and the tribal confederation grew in popularity, bringing those even outside the Ogaden clan-group into the Imamate (the position of the fourth Emir being established shortly afterwards). Battles between the nomadic Somali clans (often with the support of Oromo nomads) and the sedentary and primarily urban Egyptian settlers would continue for centuries, forcing much of the maritime trade southward into the open arms of the Ajuran Sultanate.
Ajuran, already having grown rich from controlling the Shebelle and Jubba rivers and creating a monopoly over virtually every water source in the region, building numerous wells and cisterns in the process. A highly centralised and rather despotic realm, Ajuran happily accepted Egyptian refugees for their experience as merchants, engineers, and bureaucrats. Here was a fertile land supplied by advanced irrigation systems and grown rich on the trade between the African interior and India. From Ajuran, travellers could proceed inland to the Great Lakes, where numerous Islamic polities existed. However, in the latter half of the 14th century Ajuran’s dominance of the Africa-India trade network began to come under threat from the rising Kilwa Sultanate, which had come to stretch along the entire Swahili Coast. More a confederation of city states than a true centralised realm, Kilwa fought several wars against Ajuran focused around southern Somalia and northern Kenya, with much of the fighting occurring at sea where they battled for dominance of the sea lanes. In the mid-15th century Ajuran was forced to accept the loss of their dominance after nearly a century of wars between the two states. Always susceptible to rebellion due to their highly controlling rule maintained through their water monopoly, Ajuran had been crippled by a rebellion among the Somali clans which had taken much of the Jubba valley and even included a portion of the Sultanate’s mameluke warrior corps, the elite of the army. At the same time, the Kilwa had succeeded in bringing the city states of coastal Kenya (previously allies of Ajuran) to heel in a campaign that saw the defeat of an Ajuran army and the subsequent fall of the cities one by one, as the Ajuran were unable to send reinforcements due to the seriousness of the rebellion against which they were struggling. Mombasa was the first of the four most powerful of the city states to fall, following the initial defeat of the Ajuran and allied forces in the area. Malindi fell next after a determined assault on the city walls undertaken by the battle-hardened army of Kilwa saw the defences collapse. With the arrival of Kilwan forces in the north, Pate agreed to switch sides in return for a respected position within the Kilwa Sultanate and the retention of most of their autonomy. Lamu, despite being further south than Pate, was thereby the last to resist. A two year siege thereby began, Lamu being aided in its defence by its position on Lamu Island rather than the mainland as well as a contingent of allied soldiers made up of exiles from the other city states as well as warriors from Ajuran. Despite a blockade, they continued to bring supplies into the city and there were several instances of supply convoys succeeding in running the blockade during the course of the siege. Initially, Kilwan troops sought to attack the island from the mainland using a fleet of rafts, ferries, and other smaller transport vessels. Lamu, being the youngest of the four great city states had the largest Egyptian population, and with them came all the military experience garnered in the wars against the Latins. Thereby, all the necessary preparations for a lengthy siege had been made by the Sultan of Lamu (himself descended from Egyptian nobility). A simple wall consisting of a wooden palisade (in some areas replaced by a drystone wall) had been constructed along the northern shore to defend against attack from the direction of the mainland, the earthwork extending around the rest of the coast without the wooden and stone additions. Furthermore, numerous siege engines had been constructed, including many smaller examples such as springalds and onagers which proved devastating against the Kilwan transport fleet, tightly packed with warriors, when it came within range. As bolts and stones smashed apart the simple wooden craft, arrows began to rain down from the Lamu archers as they neared the shore and made land. As warriors stormed the beach under shade of the heavy missile fire, they reached the spike-filled ditch which preceded the earthwork, itself covered in caltrops and wooden stakes. Crossing the ditch, sometimes with ladders or else only after filling it in with stones and corpses, they stormed up to the palisade walls, where they were thrown back again and again by the determined defenders. After numerous failed assaults on this pattern, with their larger ships unable to sail the channel between the mainland and the island because of the larger siege engines such as trebuchets and mangonels the defenders had placed at each end. The siege then settled down to an attempt to starve out the islanders, which failed after the aforementioned blockade running successes. Later, after the defeat of the main Ajuran fleet in a huge naval battle off the coast of Mogadishu, the Kilwan fleet was able to concentrate around Lamu and truly enforce the blockade, weakening the defender with starvation. Nevertheless, the city only fell after a major assault from both the mainland and the sea at the same time as well as the creation of a thin land bridge (which disappeared at high tide) from the mainland to Lamu undertaken by the immense army of Kilwa. With the larger warships attacking from the south, the smaller craft surged towards the island on either side of the bridge from the north, whilst an almost innumerable number of warriors moved across the bridge in a column of men. Despite heavy casualties, the second wave in the south succeeded in breaching the earthwork (which by then had been built up to nearly 30ft high), leading to the defenders conducting a fighting retreat across the island and into their defences around the city of Lamu itself, which held out for another two days before it too was taken by storm. The following wholesale slaughter of most of the inhabitants was unusual among the Kilwan conquests, the capturing of a city usually being followed only by looting rather than a massacre. Lamu Island was almost entirely depopulated, the siege having claimed many tens of thousands of lives, including civilian deaths. Later it was repopulated as a town sprung up around the naval base subsequently established by Kilwa on the ruins of the city of Lamu. Following the destruction of Lamu, Kilwan forces proceeded into southern Somalia and forced the Ajuran Sultan to accept the nominal overlordship of the Sultan of Kilwa and the paying of an annual tribute henceforth. Although Ajuran had somewhat recovered by the end of the century, they had lost their naval dominance, never to be recovered, as well as all of their territory beyond the Shebelle and Jubba valleys and their coastal settlements. Nevertheless, they continued to generate a considerable amount of wealth from the caravans which passed through their lands as well as the ships which stopped in their ports enroute to Kilwa.
Beyond the Great Lakes and their city states lay the innumerable tribes and polities of the jungle and the deserts to their north. The trade routes stretched even through these and into the Islamic realms of West Africa. Here was wealth in abundance, for they controlled the trade between Moslem North and East Africa, as well as the trade from the Dark Continent into Europe. Every possible luxury and all that mankind held as valuable could be found here, from gold, ivory, silver, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, to leopard, lion, monkey, giraffe, and cheetah pelts, along with silks, spices, salt, wines, grain, rice, fruits, and lumber. The surviving palaces of the Islamic rules of West Africa remain as examples of immense wealth and exquisite workmanship. Between them and the surviving Islamic states in North Africa lay the berber tribes who provided excellent mercenaries in West Africa and hateful enemies to the Christians encroaching into North Africa. For a fee they would willingly provide guides and guards to the trade caravans passing through their territory. In this was a Moslem could travel overland from Persia to North Africa whilst avoiding coming under the watchful eye of the Christians.
As concerns the maritime trade routes of the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Swahili coast, it may be said they all saw immense traffic, not only from trade but also from pilgrims. In the Red Sea, most Moslem maritime traffic came from Mecca and the Moslem states of Eritrea and northern Somalia. The region was noted as particularly rife with Christian pirates, both Latins from Jerusalem operating out of the Sinai and Alodians further to the south operating from the Beja ports they had conquered. The trade through both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden had been dominated by the Sharifate of Mecca since their conquest of the Yemen in the latter half of the 14th century. Despite the Moslems of Bahr negash and Ifat being moderately powerful and just as well placed to take a large cut of the wealth of the pilgrim routes, they were each focused on their armies rather than their navies, due to the threat posed by Abyssinia. The maritime trade around the Horn was controlled by al-Qarn, which lost this dominance to Ajuran in the 1340s and 1350s, before regaining it after Aljuran’s defeat at the hands of Kilwa in the mid-15th century. The island of Socotra in this region is notable for having a largely Christian population, although Moslem communities were present due to the island’s strategic location. Under al-Qarni domination from the early 14th century, in the 1390s it fell under the control of the Sharifate of Mecca after a bloodless occupation (if one does not count the bitter resistance of the Christians of the interior and the bloody war of resistance they carried on against the strict Islamic rule of the Sharifate). The Swahili Coast can be said to have been actually dominated by the Ajuran from the 1330s, before the Kilwa began to change them and they finally lost this dominance completely in the mid-15th century. In the Persian Gulf, the lack of lasting naval power among the various Persian realms such as the Shahrukhids (generally maritime security in the Gulf only lasted as long as an individual monarch) left the various smaller realms of Arabia to compete against one another in an endless series of conflicts for supremacy, piracy being especially rife in this region. Nevertheless it can be said that the Usfurids controlled much of Eastern Arabia and thereby much of the trade until the collapse of the empire in the 1330s and 1340s due to the encroachment of their neighbours. Although they continued to maintain their independence, their control of the Arab tribes of Eastern Arabia slipped away and the region fractured between them. The Kingdom of Ormus became a major player in the region following this (having seized Bahrain from the Usfurids in 1330) and as close to maritime dominance in the region as was possible. The Mufid Dyanasty controlled Bahrain as vassals of Ormus until the Ramilids brought much of Eastern Arabia under their thumb at the beginning of the 15th century, expelling the Mufids from Bahrain in 1411 and thereafter leading expeditions against Oman and into the interior of Arabia. The Sultanate of Oman had been rising as a land-power to the south during this time, but were occupied with uniting their neighbouring tribes more than gaining naval-power. Such was Arabia and the surrounding seas at the end of the 15th century.
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