Might need to invent a guillotine a few centuries early or something.
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Far too pleasant and clean. If Karolman goes the beheading route at this point, it’ll be with the dullest axe and the most drunken headsman he can find. I suspect it will be burning alive, but in the event the Church kicks up a storm about using something meant for evil pagans and heretics, then he might just throw them from the top of a bell tower or some such thing.
How about witch dunking? If drown, dead traitor; if live, burn a witch.
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Ah, I see that Eanred went for the Trojan Horse gambit, never trust a surrender that is too easy.
Karloman is in a bit of a pickle, if he can't hold onto the cities he conquers, he might have to resort to destroying them before they can switch sides
Karloman is in a bit of a pickle, if he can't hold onto the cities he conquers, he might have to resort to destroying them before they can switch sides
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Verona, Italia.
The rebel armies of the south were amassing before Verona, one of their greatest strongholds. The Duke Lambert, a grizzled and wizened veteran of the old Kingdom of Lombardy had managed to wrangle half a dozen smaller lords in central Italia into combining their retinues with his own forces to amass a force powerful enough to march north and deal with the Franks. Their intelligence indicated that the Franks had been cut off from their line of retreat and re-supply, thus a battlefield victory would not only defeat their army, but likely seen the end of Emperor Karloman and his ambitions of Empire for good.
“Karloman’s siege of Milano is an act of desperation,” the Duke intoned in a quiet voice. The old man was a grizzled veteran, and even news of the Frankish siege did not disturb his serenity in any outward manner.
“But if he were to triumph…”
“The walls are strong and thick,” Duke Lambert interrupted, “And his army is weaker from hunger, raids and attrition. The defenders will hold while we marshal our remaining forces in the south.”
Left unsaid was the other benefit the Duke did not bring up. If Milano did fall, then Duke Roamaldo would be discredited and his strategy in ruins, with both he and the Count of Firenze tainted by the failure of their moves to cut Karloman off from Francia to end the war. If they failed, the northern lords would need another candidate for the Kingship of the new Italia. A lord with holdings further south… with a proven record of success and experience.
Success or failure in the north, Duke Lambert intended to ensure he benefitted from it. His mustering of forces was expected to result in around 18’000 men under arms in his command.
Once that was done, he would be prepared to take to the field to defeat Karloman in person… or to defeat whatever rival contender to power remained in Italia once the Franks had been vanquished…
Whichever came first.
Milano, Italia.
The warmth of the day resulted in Karloman’s plan beginning smoothly. The fire burned through the wood stacked against the gate… and then burned through the gate itself, as surely as any battering ram would have smashed it in twice the time and with twice the losses.
But the enemy was not felled simply by a broken gate, quickly regrouping behind the broken gate into a defensive line that promised severe pain to any Frankish attacker Karloman commanded through the gap.
So Karloman didn’t try to send his men through the gap at first. Instead he piled on rocks, stones and dead animals onto his siege engines and lobbed them over or at the walls for days, pounding the stone walls over and over again.
Mere chance brought about a large rainstorm on the fourth day of the siege, and thus the defenders began to take the opportunity to try and prop up the now broken hole in their walls with new barricades and makeshift wooden objects slashed up and piled on top of one another.
But Karloman also took advantage of the rainstorm, the thick sheets of water fell so thick and fast the sentries on the walls could not properly see metres beyond it. This gave the Emperor his chance. Covered by sheets of wet wood, the Frankish sappers approached outer limit of the town’s wall and began their work.
The day following the Emperor sprang his trap. First he ordered his forces into battle formation, having them shout and yell and scream and dare their foes to come out from behind the walls and face them, castigating their cowardice and treason. He moved his first infantry line a little further forward… and had them continue haranguing and hassling the enemy atop the wall.
All the noise and confusion helped to mask the activities of the sappers, continuing from the night before, having now tunnelled directly beneath the wall. Fighting emerged on the other side of the walls, as surprised defenders found themselves attacked inside their own walls. Open fighting took place for over half an hour, but eventually the attacking troop forced it’s way through tore apart the makeshift barricade in the gatehouse.
Karloman’s men poured through. The sack of the city that followed was brutal. By nightfall no building over two floors high was standing. A fire, started either by panicked and fleeing citizens or by the Frankish army, had ripped through Milano’s living suburbs and gutted the markets and residential streets of the city. Milano did not last the advent of nightfall.
Karloman was not lax in distributing the spoils of war. His men’s blood was up, and they were all too happy to partake in the looting of the granaries and treasury of the city. If nothing else, this solved their immediate supply problem. The army would eat for the next few months.
“And it will do Duke Roamaldo no good to be locked up in Mantova while his capital is put to the torch” Karloman told Pepin afterwards as both of them gathered with the Emperor’s war councillors after the sack, the smell of soot and ash still imprinting itself onto the air around them from the city’s sack.
“And those who have turned on us again will take this as a warning of the price of their defiance.” Pepin was still feeling sore at the news that that Montferrato and Torino had switched their allegiance once more to the rebels, and that their land supply route through the Alps had been cut off once more.
“Their time will come son,” Karloman replied, with a small smile empty of genuine warmth flickering across his face. “They’ll keep.”
The army remained at the blackened ruins of the city for two days, like a vulture gorging on the corpse of once-beautiful Milano. But the news of Duke Lambert’s gathering horde to the south had not escaped the Emperor’s attention.
“We need a force to encircle and besiege Mantova.” Karloman told Pepin over dinner, “and another force to march south to confront the Duke and his army in pitched battle.
“I take the siege and you take the battle?” Pepin asked, grinning. He knew full well his father always preferred pitched battles to sieges. The mechanics of taking towns was not his interest, even though Pepin had found it fascinating since his own role in the seizing of Constantinople all those years ago.
“If you like,” Karloman shrugged, “I’ll give you half our forces. Nine thousand men, that will be enough.”
“You can destroy Duke Lambert with only nine thousand of your own?” Pepin asked, concerned, “He’ll have nearly twice your number.”
“Knowing Duke Lambert, he could have twenty times my number, and it would avail him nothing.” Karloman replied. He did not make the statement in a boastful tone, but merely as though it were a simple issue of fact. “He will fall to our forces. We have the experience, we have the disciplined troops and officers… and my men know who their commander is. I suspect Lambert and his friends fight amongst themselves far more than they contend with us.”
“Shalom’s spies doing their work well then eh?” Pepin asked, grinning, “It’s nice to have such rich intelligence from within the enemy camp.”
“None can replace your grandmother,” Karloman conceded, twirling a grape idly between his fingertips, “But Shalom does his job well, and he has proven it.” He crushed the grape between his fingers.
Pepin could not help but wonder if that poor little grape had etched upon it the wrinkled and weathered face of Lambert, Duke of Milan…
Torino
The Count of Firenze was further dismayed by the fall of Milano. If he had hoped that Duke Roamaldo’s forces might hold out for longer, forcing the Franks into a war of starvation and attrition, those hopes were dashed.
“And the Duke is a fool who has squandered his best fortress to hide himself away in Mantova while his people burn.”
It was a common sentiment. One that the Count heard repeated throughout his camp and the army in general as he walked among them. The strategy of Duke Roamaldo, hide in Mantova and hope for the best, had won him no admirers among the people whom he hoped to rule.
And no doubt he hoped all of us would ruin ourselves upon the Frankish menace in open battle, while he stepped out to claim the glory at the end, the Count thought bitterly.
Well he failed at that. Milano has been taken, and the only one who has won any victories is me.
Why should he, Count Eanred, bow down to a King who would not fend for himself? Should Roamaldo be the one to benefit from the work of others?
But how to gain the upper hand when the Duke held the larger army, and the largest remaining rebel fortress in the north of Italia?
Sellswords it would have to be. His lands were rich and as yet-untouched by the war. He had the funds. Let the Duke sit and stew within his fortress walls. When he fell, it would be the Count of Firenze who would carry the fight forward for a new Italia…
His ranks bolstered by volunteers from Torino and Montferrat, Count Eanred began his march south…
April 796
Karloman and Pepin’s forces split in the early days of April, Pepin arriving outside the walls of Mantova on the 10th. There he prepared to invest the walls for a siege. Karloman took his force further south, marching through rebel-held country pillaging as he went, heading toward Verona, where the largest and grandest of the rebel hosts was encamped. Duke Lambert was a hoary veteran, but cautious and prone to indecision. A swift march south by a numerically inferior army was a risk… but it seemed exactly the sort of boldness that might unsettle the Duke of Verona.
OOC: Apologies for the long wait! I made a good long and juicy post to compensate for how long it took Next one shouldn't take as long, as we delve into both the Battle of Verona and the Siege of Mantova, which will no doubt decide the fate of pretty much the whole rebellion.
As always, thanks to everyone who supported this story. Seems crazy to now admit I have a story spanning almost a full 150'000 words. I would never have got there without the support and encouragement of many people on this forum. You all know who you are, and I'm going to thank you all again
Expect another post to drop by this weekend, at the latest
The rebel armies of the south were amassing before Verona, one of their greatest strongholds. The Duke Lambert, a grizzled and wizened veteran of the old Kingdom of Lombardy had managed to wrangle half a dozen smaller lords in central Italia into combining their retinues with his own forces to amass a force powerful enough to march north and deal with the Franks. Their intelligence indicated that the Franks had been cut off from their line of retreat and re-supply, thus a battlefield victory would not only defeat their army, but likely seen the end of Emperor Karloman and his ambitions of Empire for good.
“Karloman’s siege of Milano is an act of desperation,” the Duke intoned in a quiet voice. The old man was a grizzled veteran, and even news of the Frankish siege did not disturb his serenity in any outward manner.
“But if he were to triumph…”
“The walls are strong and thick,” Duke Lambert interrupted, “And his army is weaker from hunger, raids and attrition. The defenders will hold while we marshal our remaining forces in the south.”
Left unsaid was the other benefit the Duke did not bring up. If Milano did fall, then Duke Roamaldo would be discredited and his strategy in ruins, with both he and the Count of Firenze tainted by the failure of their moves to cut Karloman off from Francia to end the war. If they failed, the northern lords would need another candidate for the Kingship of the new Italia. A lord with holdings further south… with a proven record of success and experience.
Success or failure in the north, Duke Lambert intended to ensure he benefitted from it. His mustering of forces was expected to result in around 18’000 men under arms in his command.
Once that was done, he would be prepared to take to the field to defeat Karloman in person… or to defeat whatever rival contender to power remained in Italia once the Franks had been vanquished…
Whichever came first.
Milano, Italia.
The warmth of the day resulted in Karloman’s plan beginning smoothly. The fire burned through the wood stacked against the gate… and then burned through the gate itself, as surely as any battering ram would have smashed it in twice the time and with twice the losses.
But the enemy was not felled simply by a broken gate, quickly regrouping behind the broken gate into a defensive line that promised severe pain to any Frankish attacker Karloman commanded through the gap.
So Karloman didn’t try to send his men through the gap at first. Instead he piled on rocks, stones and dead animals onto his siege engines and lobbed them over or at the walls for days, pounding the stone walls over and over again.
Mere chance brought about a large rainstorm on the fourth day of the siege, and thus the defenders began to take the opportunity to try and prop up the now broken hole in their walls with new barricades and makeshift wooden objects slashed up and piled on top of one another.
But Karloman also took advantage of the rainstorm, the thick sheets of water fell so thick and fast the sentries on the walls could not properly see metres beyond it. This gave the Emperor his chance. Covered by sheets of wet wood, the Frankish sappers approached outer limit of the town’s wall and began their work.
The day following the Emperor sprang his trap. First he ordered his forces into battle formation, having them shout and yell and scream and dare their foes to come out from behind the walls and face them, castigating their cowardice and treason. He moved his first infantry line a little further forward… and had them continue haranguing and hassling the enemy atop the wall.
All the noise and confusion helped to mask the activities of the sappers, continuing from the night before, having now tunnelled directly beneath the wall. Fighting emerged on the other side of the walls, as surprised defenders found themselves attacked inside their own walls. Open fighting took place for over half an hour, but eventually the attacking troop forced it’s way through tore apart the makeshift barricade in the gatehouse.
Karloman’s men poured through. The sack of the city that followed was brutal. By nightfall no building over two floors high was standing. A fire, started either by panicked and fleeing citizens or by the Frankish army, had ripped through Milano’s living suburbs and gutted the markets and residential streets of the city. Milano did not last the advent of nightfall.
Karloman was not lax in distributing the spoils of war. His men’s blood was up, and they were all too happy to partake in the looting of the granaries and treasury of the city. If nothing else, this solved their immediate supply problem. The army would eat for the next few months.
“And it will do Duke Roamaldo no good to be locked up in Mantova while his capital is put to the torch” Karloman told Pepin afterwards as both of them gathered with the Emperor’s war councillors after the sack, the smell of soot and ash still imprinting itself onto the air around them from the city’s sack.
“And those who have turned on us again will take this as a warning of the price of their defiance.” Pepin was still feeling sore at the news that that Montferrato and Torino had switched their allegiance once more to the rebels, and that their land supply route through the Alps had been cut off once more.
“Their time will come son,” Karloman replied, with a small smile empty of genuine warmth flickering across his face. “They’ll keep.”
The army remained at the blackened ruins of the city for two days, like a vulture gorging on the corpse of once-beautiful Milano. But the news of Duke Lambert’s gathering horde to the south had not escaped the Emperor’s attention.
“We need a force to encircle and besiege Mantova.” Karloman told Pepin over dinner, “and another force to march south to confront the Duke and his army in pitched battle.
“I take the siege and you take the battle?” Pepin asked, grinning. He knew full well his father always preferred pitched battles to sieges. The mechanics of taking towns was not his interest, even though Pepin had found it fascinating since his own role in the seizing of Constantinople all those years ago.
“If you like,” Karloman shrugged, “I’ll give you half our forces. Nine thousand men, that will be enough.”
“You can destroy Duke Lambert with only nine thousand of your own?” Pepin asked, concerned, “He’ll have nearly twice your number.”
“Knowing Duke Lambert, he could have twenty times my number, and it would avail him nothing.” Karloman replied. He did not make the statement in a boastful tone, but merely as though it were a simple issue of fact. “He will fall to our forces. We have the experience, we have the disciplined troops and officers… and my men know who their commander is. I suspect Lambert and his friends fight amongst themselves far more than they contend with us.”
“Shalom’s spies doing their work well then eh?” Pepin asked, grinning, “It’s nice to have such rich intelligence from within the enemy camp.”
“None can replace your grandmother,” Karloman conceded, twirling a grape idly between his fingertips, “But Shalom does his job well, and he has proven it.” He crushed the grape between his fingers.
Pepin could not help but wonder if that poor little grape had etched upon it the wrinkled and weathered face of Lambert, Duke of Milan…
Torino
The Count of Firenze was further dismayed by the fall of Milano. If he had hoped that Duke Roamaldo’s forces might hold out for longer, forcing the Franks into a war of starvation and attrition, those hopes were dashed.
“And the Duke is a fool who has squandered his best fortress to hide himself away in Mantova while his people burn.”
It was a common sentiment. One that the Count heard repeated throughout his camp and the army in general as he walked among them. The strategy of Duke Roamaldo, hide in Mantova and hope for the best, had won him no admirers among the people whom he hoped to rule.
And no doubt he hoped all of us would ruin ourselves upon the Frankish menace in open battle, while he stepped out to claim the glory at the end, the Count thought bitterly.
Well he failed at that. Milano has been taken, and the only one who has won any victories is me.
Why should he, Count Eanred, bow down to a King who would not fend for himself? Should Roamaldo be the one to benefit from the work of others?
But how to gain the upper hand when the Duke held the larger army, and the largest remaining rebel fortress in the north of Italia?
Sellswords it would have to be. His lands were rich and as yet-untouched by the war. He had the funds. Let the Duke sit and stew within his fortress walls. When he fell, it would be the Count of Firenze who would carry the fight forward for a new Italia…
His ranks bolstered by volunteers from Torino and Montferrat, Count Eanred began his march south…
April 796
Karloman and Pepin’s forces split in the early days of April, Pepin arriving outside the walls of Mantova on the 10th. There he prepared to invest the walls for a siege. Karloman took his force further south, marching through rebel-held country pillaging as he went, heading toward Verona, where the largest and grandest of the rebel hosts was encamped. Duke Lambert was a hoary veteran, but cautious and prone to indecision. A swift march south by a numerically inferior army was a risk… but it seemed exactly the sort of boldness that might unsettle the Duke of Verona.
OOC: Apologies for the long wait! I made a good long and juicy post to compensate for how long it took
Next one shouldn't take as long, as we delve into both the Battle of Verona and the Siege of Mantova, which will no doubt decide the fate of pretty much the whole rebellion.As always, thanks to everyone who supported this story. Seems crazy to now admit I have a story spanning almost a full 150'000 words. I would never have got there without the support and encouragement of many people on this forum. You all know who you are, and I'm going to thank you all again
Expect another post to drop by this weekend, at the latest
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Italy divided! They need to achieve victory before trying to divide the spoils. Thank you for updating.
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Counting gold you haven't looted yet is a common problem of politics
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No need to apologise, and we all really appreciate the extra big post! Seems that Duke Roamaldo is a disappointment to his friends...
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A bloody path is being carved across Italy and the crown is nowhere to be seen. I expect that a power struggle will cripple the Italians' last attempts
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Just letting everyone know the next post shall be up tomorrow Just editing things up to the standard I'm happy with now
Just editing things up to the standard I'm happy with now- 1
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April 28th 796.
The Siege of Mantova had begun…
Pepin’s forces arrived on the morn of the 28th, and the Crown Prince ordered the swift felling of nearby woods. He attacked any foraging party the rebels sent out from behind the walls, and spent the rest of the day organising his siege engines into position to begin bombardment of the fortress’s walls.
But Pepin had neither the men nor the intention to storm the walls by force. Mantova’s fortifications were formidable, and it’s location even more so. But Pepin did not have his father’s impatience when marching onto victory. He was quite content to proceed slowly, methodically, surrounding and cutting off the city, barraging it’s walls to frighten and surround the defenders, methodically closing a noose around the neck of the fortress and choking off it’s supply.
He did not know for how many months Mantova would hold out before it fell. But fall it would, and Pepin was content to sit and wait as long as was needed for it to be done.
Especially since he knew it was his father who would claim the greater glory. It was the Emperor who commanded the whole stratagem, and the Emperor who would take the full credit for his triumph when it was done.
Pepin did not begrudge his father the honours of war, happy to play his part as a tactical instrument of his father’s strategic will, but it had not escaped his notice that his father was nearing fifty. One day, maybe even one day soon, it would be his turn.
If the Siege of Mantova was to be any indication, he meant to ensure that his turn would be as successful as Karloman’s was.
North of Verona, Italia
Under Karloman, the Frankish force that marched south toward Verona made good time. That the Emperor was outnumbered almost two to one by the host that sweltered before the walls of Verona meant that Duke Lambert, appraised of Karloman’s movements, did not take seriously reports that the Emperor appeared to be moving south in earnest. Confident that this was a feint, he refrained from sending out scouts to harass or kill Karloman’s troops or even damage his supply train, so confident he was that the Emperor’s true target lay elsewhere.
It was a shock then, in the middle of May, to discover that the Emperor’s force had arrived and occupied a position barely three miles north of Verona and, apparently undimmed by the approaching summer heat, had formed up for battle, issuing a challenge to the Duke to come and face them.
Confident it was a feint, the Duke refused, to murmurings from his officers. He outnumbered the Frankish invader two-to-one, why did he not strike and finish them now? Karloman had blundered, they said, overconfidently marching an outnumbered and overextended army too far south too quickly.
But the next day a second challenge came from the Emperor’s messenger, and a third on the third day. The Duke, cautious, began to finally probe the Emperor’s defenses for any signs of traps or hidden ambushes.
They found nothing, and aside from a few inconclusive skirmishers with Karloman’s foragers, nothing of note seemed to indicate a trap.
“We find no evidence that Karloman intends to do anything except fight us on open ground.”
“He’d mad,” Duke Lambert replied, his deep voice rumbling through the war tent, “He’s got barely half our men. A fight on open ground will see us overwhelm him. Even with our less experienced men, we’d still manage it.”
“Perhaps he has miscalculated the size of our army your grace?” One off the Duke’s advisors hoped to offer a logical explanation for the Emperor’s move. “If he believes we have fewer forces than we do-“
“His messenger has ridden to our camp demanding the same battle for three days now,” the Duke broke in irritably. “If he mistook the size of our force, he must surely be appraised far better now. Yet still he insists on a battle that cannot be in his interests? Why?”
The simple truth of course, was that Karloman wanted a battle and was prepared to do what he must to force one and that, outnumbered or not, he was confident he would win it. The simplicity of this logic escaped the cautious Duke however, who saw monsters in every shadow and traps in every move, and so naturally assumed Karloman had some grand scheme that had yet to reveal itself, and that only by some terrible trick would Karloman win the battle he seemed insistent on forcing the rebels into.
On the fourth day, Karloman sent no messenger, but instead sent outriders to devastate the nearby villages, sending waves of fleeing, penniless refugees into the Duke Lambert’s camp, apparently with a message that the Duke was feeding and clothing, from his own treasury, all those who were fleeing the war effort.
“He means to force us to battle.” One of the Duke’s advisors intoned in council.
The Duke barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Of course! How wonderful of his advisors to point out such things to him! He would’ve had no way of figuring it out otherwise.
“Your grasp of the obvious is truly inspiring,” The Duke told the fellow, who hung his head a little at the stinging rebuke. “But I’ll not oblige him, not here, not now. He cannot mean to do battle with what he has, so the fact that he seems to want to means he has some scheme in mind. We shall sit, we will wait.”
“At least march north to relieve Mantova, if you want fight,” one of the Duke’s more aggressive councillors had urged him.
“And leave Karloman free to pillage between here and Roma?” Duke Lambert was aghast. “No, I mean to wait him out, and I’ll do it here.”
But the Duke’s councillors weren’t the only ones grumbling. Any army in the field wants to fight, and the rebels who saw the Franks terrorising their local villages and stealing their crops and livestock were no exceptions. At first a delegation of officers came to the Duke’s tent, and then the following day, a group of the ordinary soldiers.
“We want to fight.”
“You cannot,” came the Duke’s reply.
On the eighth day of this, rumors stirred of ugly arguments in the command tent, and stories that one of the Duke’s nephews, a good-lacking but ill-brained lad name Enzo, was plotting to seize control of the army and immediately deploy it to battle against Karloman.
That rumor was the final straw, on the ninth day the Duke ordered the rumor-mongers be found and identified, and once this was done, proceeded to hang them before an assembly of the entire army.
The trickle of deserters began that very night…
Karloman’s camp.
“By God Lambert is a slug!” Karloman stamped his foot impatiently. “Will he never fight?”
“Word of discontent has spread,” it was the Duke of Tolouse who had spoken, “It certainly seems that Lambert’s troops aren’t holding his refusal to fight in high regard.”
Another batch of deserters arrived on the eleventh day, confirming this story.
“Tonight you’ll have the men fire a volley into the Duke’s camp,” Karloman finally told his officers impatiently. “Yell at them, call them cowards, cuckolds, fools led to fear, anything you can think of! We want to make the Duke’s army so angry he dare not refuse them when they ask him to fight. Their patience wears thin we know, so let’s tip them over the edge.
The humiliation of a midnight raid by a much inferior army going unchallenged the following day spread near-murderous discontent throughout the rebel camp. Hundreds more deserters trickled out the following day, and the Duke doubled the guard post outside his command tent and was not seen leaving it all day. If he had, he would’ve likely not lived to step foot on the battlefield.
He did emerge at dawn the following day, horsed and clad for battle as he gave the command to form up. A great roar erupted from his somewhat depleted army, but regardless of the setbacks, they marched into line valiantly preparing to take the fight to the Frankish invader…
And ended it in utter disaster. The Frankish forces launched an assault, with the first and second line of infantry beginning the day by advancing forward, covered by an arrow and slinger barrage. A third line of infantry was held in reserve, and the first charge slammed into the more numerous but poorly organised rebel lines. The enthusiasm for the fight turned to a wave of fear as the frontlines buckled under the assault of the veteran Frankish infantry
On the wings, the rebel horseman surged forward, aiming to cut into the flanks of the Frankish advance, only to find themselves face to face with a wall of spears. Karloman had placed one hundred trained pikemen on either side of his first two lines, hidden safely behind the advancing regular infantrymen. Panicked horses dumped their riders and bolted for the hills rather than charge headlong into the pike wall, and those who made it close enough were killed or forced to desperately turn themselves around. They galloped from the field and took no further part in the day’s proceedings.
Then it was Karloman who sent his horsemen forward, a thick cloud of dust rolled ahead of the thunderous charge as the midday sun soared over the battlefield. With cries of “For the Emperor!” they hit hard into a gap on the faltering left flank of the rebel force. Once the left crumbled, the centre and right were rolled up within minutes.
The entire battle had lasted less than two hours. Over six hundred Franks had perished, a trivial number considering the scale of the enemy’s losses. Six thousand rebels fled or died on the field, and hundreds of captives were taken, including, to Karloman’s delight, the Duke of Verona himself. The old man was roughly shoved from his horse into the dust beneath Karloman’s feet. The Emperor had him graciously helped to his feet and taken away to a private tent for a drink of water and some refreshing fresh fruit.
“He’s going to die anyway,” The Emperor told his council later, “No reason to prolong his torment before then.”
Whatever the Duke’s fate, the rebel’s power in the south of Italia evaporated in the coming weeks. The Duchy of Benevento was safe from further raids, the Papal State was secure in its independence, Verona surrendered and was heavily fined by the Emperor for it’s disloyalty, with ten of it’s most prominent noble families forced to yield a single scion of their house as hostages for the Emperor’s court. Other towns that surrendered escaped with smaller fines.
With the largest rebel army completely smashed from the field and it’s leadership dead or captive, the war in Italia had finally turned Karloman’s way…
Somewhere in Saxony.
“You brought it?” hissed the voice beneath the hood.
Seeing the figure in the dark, the weary looking mercenary dismounted his horse and seized the sack from his saddle. His horse nickered softly at the noise, and he felt the cool dirt crunch beneath his boots as he strode forward.
“Aye, I have, just as you asked.”
He held the sack aloft in his hands, as if baring it’s contents for the other fellow’s inspection, though the innards of the bag could not be seen from this distance.
“Give it here,” the fellow said, and roughly ripped it from the rider’s grasp.
“Now here, you promised me payment for a real…”
“You get paid when I verify it’s authentic. Like you said it was.”
He lifted his hand into the sack, and drew the item from it.
A small circle of gold and jewels, fitted around a thick silver band came into his hands.
He shook it slightly, then gazed at the man who had brought it.
“This the real thing?”
“Definitely,” the man nodded emphatically, “Count the jewels to be sure.”
The fellow did. The crown had twenty-two jewels. The correct number.
“I trust you’ve got my pay then?”
The fellow with the crown looked at the rider who had brought him his prize.
“Aye, I have.”
At a flick of his fingers, the woosh of an arrow fired from a nearby bush flung through the air. The rider flung up a hand to his throat, and then wordlessly fell to the ground, his windpipe gurgling blood.
“We have paid you your price.” The other fellow told the corpse, and quickly stuffed the crown back into it’s sack.
The dead fellow’s horse stood off to the side, quietly grazing, apparently unpertubed at the fate of it’s master.
“Collections like this are valuable,” the hooded man said to the bowmen, who was just emerging into view. “The Crown is authentic, but it has no meaning to anyone this far east. We will carry it further, and we will make it our own symbol.”
“Sure the Italians would pay a pretty sum to get it back…” the bowman muttered, “Or the Franks.”
“Yet both would just as likely cut our throats as payment for our services in delivering it.” The man said, gesturing to the dead unfortunate sellsword who had sold out his compatriots who had planned to deliver the Crown to the Italian rebels, had sold it instead to his wealthy patron east of Saxony, and had met the same betrayal and fate that he had meted out.
“No, let the Franks and the Italians squabble. And for now, the Crown will make a nice ornament on the mantelpiece for my descendants to gaze at in awe and wonder.”
And with that, he mounted his own horse, and nodded to the bowmen.
“Bring the other animal along. It’ll be good to have an extra animal for grazing.”
And so the Crown of Lombardy disappeared into the east. And into legend. It would not re-emerge in Western Europe for several centuries…
OOC: The Crown will return into the story... But not for a long time. It got sold to a... private collector out east.
Obviously there will be a way Karloman and Pepin respond to the ramifications of this theft. But that's for another post.
But for now, the war continues, and it looks to turn in Karloman's favour, and with Lambert captured and Roamaldo under siege and without his crown, things don't look great for the rebels so far.
The Siege of Mantova had begun…
Pepin’s forces arrived on the morn of the 28th, and the Crown Prince ordered the swift felling of nearby woods. He attacked any foraging party the rebels sent out from behind the walls, and spent the rest of the day organising his siege engines into position to begin bombardment of the fortress’s walls.
But Pepin had neither the men nor the intention to storm the walls by force. Mantova’s fortifications were formidable, and it’s location even more so. But Pepin did not have his father’s impatience when marching onto victory. He was quite content to proceed slowly, methodically, surrounding and cutting off the city, barraging it’s walls to frighten and surround the defenders, methodically closing a noose around the neck of the fortress and choking off it’s supply.
He did not know for how many months Mantova would hold out before it fell. But fall it would, and Pepin was content to sit and wait as long as was needed for it to be done.
Especially since he knew it was his father who would claim the greater glory. It was the Emperor who commanded the whole stratagem, and the Emperor who would take the full credit for his triumph when it was done.
Pepin did not begrudge his father the honours of war, happy to play his part as a tactical instrument of his father’s strategic will, but it had not escaped his notice that his father was nearing fifty. One day, maybe even one day soon, it would be his turn.
If the Siege of Mantova was to be any indication, he meant to ensure that his turn would be as successful as Karloman’s was.
North of Verona, Italia
Under Karloman, the Frankish force that marched south toward Verona made good time. That the Emperor was outnumbered almost two to one by the host that sweltered before the walls of Verona meant that Duke Lambert, appraised of Karloman’s movements, did not take seriously reports that the Emperor appeared to be moving south in earnest. Confident that this was a feint, he refrained from sending out scouts to harass or kill Karloman’s troops or even damage his supply train, so confident he was that the Emperor’s true target lay elsewhere.
It was a shock then, in the middle of May, to discover that the Emperor’s force had arrived and occupied a position barely three miles north of Verona and, apparently undimmed by the approaching summer heat, had formed up for battle, issuing a challenge to the Duke to come and face them.
Confident it was a feint, the Duke refused, to murmurings from his officers. He outnumbered the Frankish invader two-to-one, why did he not strike and finish them now? Karloman had blundered, they said, overconfidently marching an outnumbered and overextended army too far south too quickly.
But the next day a second challenge came from the Emperor’s messenger, and a third on the third day. The Duke, cautious, began to finally probe the Emperor’s defenses for any signs of traps or hidden ambushes.
They found nothing, and aside from a few inconclusive skirmishers with Karloman’s foragers, nothing of note seemed to indicate a trap.
“We find no evidence that Karloman intends to do anything except fight us on open ground.”
“He’d mad,” Duke Lambert replied, his deep voice rumbling through the war tent, “He’s got barely half our men. A fight on open ground will see us overwhelm him. Even with our less experienced men, we’d still manage it.”
“Perhaps he has miscalculated the size of our army your grace?” One off the Duke’s advisors hoped to offer a logical explanation for the Emperor’s move. “If he believes we have fewer forces than we do-“
“His messenger has ridden to our camp demanding the same battle for three days now,” the Duke broke in irritably. “If he mistook the size of our force, he must surely be appraised far better now. Yet still he insists on a battle that cannot be in his interests? Why?”
The simple truth of course, was that Karloman wanted a battle and was prepared to do what he must to force one and that, outnumbered or not, he was confident he would win it. The simplicity of this logic escaped the cautious Duke however, who saw monsters in every shadow and traps in every move, and so naturally assumed Karloman had some grand scheme that had yet to reveal itself, and that only by some terrible trick would Karloman win the battle he seemed insistent on forcing the rebels into.
On the fourth day, Karloman sent no messenger, but instead sent outriders to devastate the nearby villages, sending waves of fleeing, penniless refugees into the Duke Lambert’s camp, apparently with a message that the Duke was feeding and clothing, from his own treasury, all those who were fleeing the war effort.
“He means to force us to battle.” One of the Duke’s advisors intoned in council.
The Duke barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Of course! How wonderful of his advisors to point out such things to him! He would’ve had no way of figuring it out otherwise.
“Your grasp of the obvious is truly inspiring,” The Duke told the fellow, who hung his head a little at the stinging rebuke. “But I’ll not oblige him, not here, not now. He cannot mean to do battle with what he has, so the fact that he seems to want to means he has some scheme in mind. We shall sit, we will wait.”
“At least march north to relieve Mantova, if you want fight,” one of the Duke’s more aggressive councillors had urged him.
“And leave Karloman free to pillage between here and Roma?” Duke Lambert was aghast. “No, I mean to wait him out, and I’ll do it here.”
But the Duke’s councillors weren’t the only ones grumbling. Any army in the field wants to fight, and the rebels who saw the Franks terrorising their local villages and stealing their crops and livestock were no exceptions. At first a delegation of officers came to the Duke’s tent, and then the following day, a group of the ordinary soldiers.
“We want to fight.”
“You cannot,” came the Duke’s reply.
On the eighth day of this, rumors stirred of ugly arguments in the command tent, and stories that one of the Duke’s nephews, a good-lacking but ill-brained lad name Enzo, was plotting to seize control of the army and immediately deploy it to battle against Karloman.
That rumor was the final straw, on the ninth day the Duke ordered the rumor-mongers be found and identified, and once this was done, proceeded to hang them before an assembly of the entire army.
The trickle of deserters began that very night…
Karloman’s camp.
“By God Lambert is a slug!” Karloman stamped his foot impatiently. “Will he never fight?”
“Word of discontent has spread,” it was the Duke of Tolouse who had spoken, “It certainly seems that Lambert’s troops aren’t holding his refusal to fight in high regard.”
Another batch of deserters arrived on the eleventh day, confirming this story.
“Tonight you’ll have the men fire a volley into the Duke’s camp,” Karloman finally told his officers impatiently. “Yell at them, call them cowards, cuckolds, fools led to fear, anything you can think of! We want to make the Duke’s army so angry he dare not refuse them when they ask him to fight. Their patience wears thin we know, so let’s tip them over the edge.
The humiliation of a midnight raid by a much inferior army going unchallenged the following day spread near-murderous discontent throughout the rebel camp. Hundreds more deserters trickled out the following day, and the Duke doubled the guard post outside his command tent and was not seen leaving it all day. If he had, he would’ve likely not lived to step foot on the battlefield.
He did emerge at dawn the following day, horsed and clad for battle as he gave the command to form up. A great roar erupted from his somewhat depleted army, but regardless of the setbacks, they marched into line valiantly preparing to take the fight to the Frankish invader…
And ended it in utter disaster. The Frankish forces launched an assault, with the first and second line of infantry beginning the day by advancing forward, covered by an arrow and slinger barrage. A third line of infantry was held in reserve, and the first charge slammed into the more numerous but poorly organised rebel lines. The enthusiasm for the fight turned to a wave of fear as the frontlines buckled under the assault of the veteran Frankish infantry
On the wings, the rebel horseman surged forward, aiming to cut into the flanks of the Frankish advance, only to find themselves face to face with a wall of spears. Karloman had placed one hundred trained pikemen on either side of his first two lines, hidden safely behind the advancing regular infantrymen. Panicked horses dumped their riders and bolted for the hills rather than charge headlong into the pike wall, and those who made it close enough were killed or forced to desperately turn themselves around. They galloped from the field and took no further part in the day’s proceedings.
Then it was Karloman who sent his horsemen forward, a thick cloud of dust rolled ahead of the thunderous charge as the midday sun soared over the battlefield. With cries of “For the Emperor!” they hit hard into a gap on the faltering left flank of the rebel force. Once the left crumbled, the centre and right were rolled up within minutes.
The entire battle had lasted less than two hours. Over six hundred Franks had perished, a trivial number considering the scale of the enemy’s losses. Six thousand rebels fled or died on the field, and hundreds of captives were taken, including, to Karloman’s delight, the Duke of Verona himself. The old man was roughly shoved from his horse into the dust beneath Karloman’s feet. The Emperor had him graciously helped to his feet and taken away to a private tent for a drink of water and some refreshing fresh fruit.
“He’s going to die anyway,” The Emperor told his council later, “No reason to prolong his torment before then.”
Whatever the Duke’s fate, the rebel’s power in the south of Italia evaporated in the coming weeks. The Duchy of Benevento was safe from further raids, the Papal State was secure in its independence, Verona surrendered and was heavily fined by the Emperor for it’s disloyalty, with ten of it’s most prominent noble families forced to yield a single scion of their house as hostages for the Emperor’s court. Other towns that surrendered escaped with smaller fines.
With the largest rebel army completely smashed from the field and it’s leadership dead or captive, the war in Italia had finally turned Karloman’s way…
Somewhere in Saxony.
“You brought it?” hissed the voice beneath the hood.
Seeing the figure in the dark, the weary looking mercenary dismounted his horse and seized the sack from his saddle. His horse nickered softly at the noise, and he felt the cool dirt crunch beneath his boots as he strode forward.
“Aye, I have, just as you asked.”
He held the sack aloft in his hands, as if baring it’s contents for the other fellow’s inspection, though the innards of the bag could not be seen from this distance.
“Give it here,” the fellow said, and roughly ripped it from the rider’s grasp.
“Now here, you promised me payment for a real…”
“You get paid when I verify it’s authentic. Like you said it was.”
He lifted his hand into the sack, and drew the item from it.
A small circle of gold and jewels, fitted around a thick silver band came into his hands.
He shook it slightly, then gazed at the man who had brought it.
“This the real thing?”
“Definitely,” the man nodded emphatically, “Count the jewels to be sure.”
The fellow did. The crown had twenty-two jewels. The correct number.
“I trust you’ve got my pay then?”
The fellow with the crown looked at the rider who had brought him his prize.
“Aye, I have.”
At a flick of his fingers, the woosh of an arrow fired from a nearby bush flung through the air. The rider flung up a hand to his throat, and then wordlessly fell to the ground, his windpipe gurgling blood.
“We have paid you your price.” The other fellow told the corpse, and quickly stuffed the crown back into it’s sack.
The dead fellow’s horse stood off to the side, quietly grazing, apparently unpertubed at the fate of it’s master.
“Collections like this are valuable,” the hooded man said to the bowmen, who was just emerging into view. “The Crown is authentic, but it has no meaning to anyone this far east. We will carry it further, and we will make it our own symbol.”
“Sure the Italians would pay a pretty sum to get it back…” the bowman muttered, “Or the Franks.”
“Yet both would just as likely cut our throats as payment for our services in delivering it.” The man said, gesturing to the dead unfortunate sellsword who had sold out his compatriots who had planned to deliver the Crown to the Italian rebels, had sold it instead to his wealthy patron east of Saxony, and had met the same betrayal and fate that he had meted out.
“No, let the Franks and the Italians squabble. And for now, the Crown will make a nice ornament on the mantelpiece for my descendants to gaze at in awe and wonder.”
And with that, he mounted his own horse, and nodded to the bowmen.
“Bring the other animal along. It’ll be good to have an extra animal for grazing.”
And so the Crown of Lombardy disappeared into the east. And into legend. It would not re-emerge in Western Europe for several centuries…
OOC: The Crown will return into the story... But not for a long time. It got sold to a... private collector out east.
Obviously there will be a way Karloman and Pepin respond to the ramifications of this theft. But that's for another post.
But for now, the war continues, and it looks to turn in Karloman's favour, and with Lambert captured and Roamaldo under siege and without his crown, things don't look great for the rebels so far.
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Hmmm… what eastern patron has the means to steal the crown through an elaborate intelligence service, and the interest in the holy relic of the crown and/or the Italian throne?
My initial thought is the Byzantines, and it still is more likely than not to be them, but unless Irene is planning some crazy scheme to have her son with Karolman replace Pepin and reunite West and East, then it would probably be worth considering other candidates like the Saracens or Croatia.
My initial thought is the Byzantines, and it still is more likely than not to be them, but unless Irene is planning some crazy scheme to have her son with Karolman replace Pepin and reunite West and East, then it would probably be worth considering other candidates like the Saracens or Croatia.
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Lambert - Death by overthinking. No honor among thieves. Thank you for the update.
My guess is Rurikids wanting the crown as a symbol of third Rome.
My guess is Rurikids wanting the crown as a symbol of third Rome.
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I shan't give any hints as to the culprits, only to say that the scheme to get the crown was NOT Irene's doing.
As written, the initial plan was by Duke Roamaldo who paid them to steal the Crown, but clearly when his men were betrayed and slain by their partner, he found a buyer able to pay a far higher price than a group of Italian rebels ever could.
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An interesting destination for the crown! It hasn't brought much luck to its previous owners, we'll see what will happen to it in the future.
And the rebels look well and truly bested, it's only a matter of mopping up now...
And the rebels look well and truly bested, it's only a matter of mopping up now...
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The Po Valley
News of the catastrophe at Verona trickled north, and it was Eanread who despaired of the rebels chances upon hearing it.
“We need the sellswords”, he told his closest advisors. “Without troops to relieve Mantova. We’re defeated.”
All thoughts of his ongoing quarrel with Duke Roamaldo now forgotten, he bent his mind to the purchase of the sellswords that would be necessary to relieve the siege.
The three captains whom he had deigned to meet were prepared to haggle, and haggle hard. They gave no sign of knowing about the defeat at Verona, and he did not inform them, fearing that any such knowledge would make them balk away from any contract.
When they finally settled on a price, he breathed a sigh of relief, he would have an additional six thousand men between the three companies. Time enough to march east to relieve Mantova before the larger Frankish army arrived. Time to wipe out the besieger, perhaps even capture Karloman’s heir. A ransom would perhaps persuade the Emperor to negotiate.
So it was that the Count of Firenze set his forces marching out into the east, marching to the relief of Mantova, barely two days march away…
Mantova,
But riding hard ahead of the main army was a messenger. The courier arrived in the war tent of Prince Pepin.
“I bring word from three great captains whom have joined their forces with those of Eanred of Firenze,” went the message. “They have agreed upon a price, but see no wish to take his side in a losing war. They are willing to arrange an agreement with the Emperor, in exchange for a fairer price…”
Taking swift hint of the opportunity, Pepin heard the messenger intone the price which his captains had been paid for their contract, and immediately relayed a verbal message to the courier who had ridden miles ahead of the main column to reach his army.
“Bring me the head of the Count of Firenze, and you’ll have double the price he paid you.”
So the rider went the same night which he had come, carrying Pepin’s words back to his masters. While Pepin’s forces continued the siege of that formidable fortress, the news of six thousand rebels marching towards their position from the west was highly unwelcome, especially with Karloman still too far south to reinforce them.
West of Mantova
Count Eanred had not expected the result he got, for when he sat down to dinner with his fellow commanders, the leaders of his sellsword hires burst in and demanded a greater share of the spoils than had been promised.
“I made an agreement with you in good faith and gave you my word,” the count shook his head. “Why should I respond to your attempts to break your word now?”
“Because of this,” the sellsword’s representative replied, and took the Count’s head off there and then with a single strike.
It did not take long for the mayhem to spread. Several of the army’s other commanders died, and the sellswords themselves set fire to tents and let horses loose into the night to confuse any pursuit. Those who managed to fight their way out of the camp made their way east towards the Frankish prince and their reward.
The virtually leaderless and rudderless Italian rebel force crumbled in the wake of the massacre. Some men wanted to press on, but far more were demoralised and confused, and small groups began drifting off into the night. Realising that they had not the strength to attempt any relief to the siege of Mantova, those who wanted to commit themselves to battle instead were forced to recognise the inevitable. They melted away as night gave way to dawn, The relief army that had been marching to the assistance of Mantova simply faded into the shadows, it’s survivors returning home and hoping to merely continue on with their lives.
There would be no relief for that beleaguered city.
Within weeks, Karloman’s forces had begun marching north, having fully defeated the remaining rebel strongholds in the south. Within Mantova, the rebel forces had become sickened by disease and their food reserves had begun to diminish, though stricter rationing could keep them going for several more months.
It was when the Franks lobbed the head of the Count of Firenze over the walls on a catapault had Duke Roamaldo knew the end was near. He had received no word of victories in the south, but Karloman’s banner had been spotted many miles south, meaning the Emperor and his army were still in the field, which did not bode well for his fellows in the south either. The Duke secluded himself inside his own chambers, beginning to drink wine more heavily than usual. It was the damned Crown, he kept thinking to himself. When he lost the Crown, he lost his luck, and the blessings of God.
The only reason none inside the town wanted to surrender was that they knew there would be no mercy on them. Duke Roamaldo was a rebel twice over now, and none were foolish enough to believe Karloman would extend his clemency twice. So when the Emperor set his banner onto the field beside his son’s and the two Frankish armies rejoined to complete the utter encirclement of the city, the defenders grimly settled in for a slow march to their own deaths…
By May, the city’s population had begun to starve. By June, the Duke felt compelled to issue a decree preventing the inhabitants from eating their own dead, for fear of the risk that this would pose to morale. All the while, the Frankish siege engines pounded relentlessly upon the wall.
On the first day of July, the Duke, exhausted and thin as a skeleton, finally bowed to the inevitable.
“Send a man out to plead for mercy for the inhabitants and ask for terms,” was the only order he gave.
The messenger was dispatched to the Frankish camp. He was returned at dusk, or rather, the remains of his headless corpse were, catapaulted over the walls by the Franks. The response was clear. No mercy. No surrender.
“So be it.” Was Roamaldo’s only response.
The following day he said goodbye to his household servants, and clothed himself in his battle armour. He was gaunt and thin now, and his plate mail did little to enhance his diminished form, but he strode out into the courtyard of his hold with a clear head.
As he mounted his battle steed, he summoned his own personal retinue to the square.
“I will not demand any of you follow me.” He told them, “If you surrender, it is possible Karloman may show you mercy, for you swore him no oath that you then broke. But if you will follow me, one last time, I shall have you.”
He waited, but among that small retinue of several dozen men that remained alive and uninjured, none of them moved to desert him. He waited silently for several long minutes. But not a man in that square moved that morn.
“Alright then,” he finally said. “Time to make an end to it.”
Those of his retinue also mounted themselves with the last of the horses, who looked as skeletal and thin as their riders, and they began to ride in a small column directly towards the south gate. A small crowd of starving, ravenous civilians gathered to watch them leave in near-silence.
“Once we fall, open the gates and I’ve no doubt you will be fed.” He told them as he left, bitterly grimacing because he knew this was a lie. I have led them to their deaths for nothing, better to not drag it out any longer than necessary. “But I do not mean to be beheaded before a screaming mob like some common thug. I shall die facing Karloman with a sword in my hand.”
And with that, he saw that huge southern gate heave open, and rode his small cavalry retinue with their half-starved horses out the gates and to their dooms…
“He died well.” Pepin gazed approvingly towards the small group of dead riders as the Duke’s standard fell from the centre of the column. “I would not have expected it of him.”
“Died well for a traitor’s cause.” Karloman dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Let’s pray the fools in the fortress see more sense than he ever did.”
Pepin glanced at his father but said nothing. In previous years such bravery might have garnered an approving comment from the Emperor, but not today. Apparently Roamaldo’s treachery had been one bridge too far for Karloman to owe even token respect to.
In any case, Mantova yielded itself up a few hours later, hoping for mercy. Karloman showed none, publicly setting up a tribunal and hosting public executions of the city’s leading figures before giving over the surviving population to the torch and sword. His men looted the fortress, and showed no mercy to any inhabitants that could not cower or flee.
“Let it stay here,” Karloman decreed coldly when the day’s slaughter was done. “Let the charred remains of Mantova be an epitath for all who would defy the Emperor and their oaths to read.”
Pepin said nothing in return, but merely swallowed down the bile he found creeping into his throat at the site of the butchery. He understood his father’s reasoning. But he did not have to like it…
In any case, the war in Italy was virtually over. With the rebellion crushed and the Peninsula secured, the Empire’s territory was once again secure. Pepin, for one, was looking forward to his return home…
Bohemia, Praha, August 796.
The small group that had raided the Frankish caravan had not been expecting Vratislav to punish them for their actions. Indeed, their raid had brought gold and glory both to their chief.
But the mere site of treasures plundered from the Frankish traders sent him into an uproar, and the Chief proceeded to castigate them for having risked drawing the ire of the Frankish Emperor into yet another conflict.
“I’d have thought you’d have learned after Bavaria,” he told them, “But apparently I overestimated you. I shan’t do so again.”
Regardless, Vratislav knew full well the risks that might come of an attack on an imperial convoy. The Frankish Emperor tolerated no meddling in his affairs, and he needed little excuse to wage vicious war against peoples who kept to the old gods, as the Bohemians did.
But Vratislav knew he could not stand against the vast Frankish armies alone. He needed help, and he intended that when the new year came, he would have it.
Within days he had riders dispatched by the dozen, riding north, east and south. Every direction and to every Kingdom and tribe he could find that still held out with the old ways, and kept faith against the rise of the Christians and their new god.
If Karloman was looking for an excuse to march east again, he would not stand alone against the inevitable. He would fight with all the tribes of the east who still remained… Bohemia would not fall…
OOC: The Italian revolt is crushed but Pagans in the east cause trouble again. It seems Karloman was in a bad mood this time around!
There'll be a Bohemian war starting up next post, and maybe some return to focus on the imperial family dynamics again. Pepin's time will come to shine one day as well, out from under his father's shadow...
News of the catastrophe at Verona trickled north, and it was Eanread who despaired of the rebels chances upon hearing it.
“We need the sellswords”, he told his closest advisors. “Without troops to relieve Mantova. We’re defeated.”
All thoughts of his ongoing quarrel with Duke Roamaldo now forgotten, he bent his mind to the purchase of the sellswords that would be necessary to relieve the siege.
The three captains whom he had deigned to meet were prepared to haggle, and haggle hard. They gave no sign of knowing about the defeat at Verona, and he did not inform them, fearing that any such knowledge would make them balk away from any contract.
When they finally settled on a price, he breathed a sigh of relief, he would have an additional six thousand men between the three companies. Time enough to march east to relieve Mantova before the larger Frankish army arrived. Time to wipe out the besieger, perhaps even capture Karloman’s heir. A ransom would perhaps persuade the Emperor to negotiate.
So it was that the Count of Firenze set his forces marching out into the east, marching to the relief of Mantova, barely two days march away…
Mantova,
But riding hard ahead of the main army was a messenger. The courier arrived in the war tent of Prince Pepin.
“I bring word from three great captains whom have joined their forces with those of Eanred of Firenze,” went the message. “They have agreed upon a price, but see no wish to take his side in a losing war. They are willing to arrange an agreement with the Emperor, in exchange for a fairer price…”
Taking swift hint of the opportunity, Pepin heard the messenger intone the price which his captains had been paid for their contract, and immediately relayed a verbal message to the courier who had ridden miles ahead of the main column to reach his army.
“Bring me the head of the Count of Firenze, and you’ll have double the price he paid you.”
So the rider went the same night which he had come, carrying Pepin’s words back to his masters. While Pepin’s forces continued the siege of that formidable fortress, the news of six thousand rebels marching towards their position from the west was highly unwelcome, especially with Karloman still too far south to reinforce them.
West of Mantova
Count Eanred had not expected the result he got, for when he sat down to dinner with his fellow commanders, the leaders of his sellsword hires burst in and demanded a greater share of the spoils than had been promised.
“I made an agreement with you in good faith and gave you my word,” the count shook his head. “Why should I respond to your attempts to break your word now?”
“Because of this,” the sellsword’s representative replied, and took the Count’s head off there and then with a single strike.
It did not take long for the mayhem to spread. Several of the army’s other commanders died, and the sellswords themselves set fire to tents and let horses loose into the night to confuse any pursuit. Those who managed to fight their way out of the camp made their way east towards the Frankish prince and their reward.
The virtually leaderless and rudderless Italian rebel force crumbled in the wake of the massacre. Some men wanted to press on, but far more were demoralised and confused, and small groups began drifting off into the night. Realising that they had not the strength to attempt any relief to the siege of Mantova, those who wanted to commit themselves to battle instead were forced to recognise the inevitable. They melted away as night gave way to dawn, The relief army that had been marching to the assistance of Mantova simply faded into the shadows, it’s survivors returning home and hoping to merely continue on with their lives.
There would be no relief for that beleaguered city.
Within weeks, Karloman’s forces had begun marching north, having fully defeated the remaining rebel strongholds in the south. Within Mantova, the rebel forces had become sickened by disease and their food reserves had begun to diminish, though stricter rationing could keep them going for several more months.
It was when the Franks lobbed the head of the Count of Firenze over the walls on a catapault had Duke Roamaldo knew the end was near. He had received no word of victories in the south, but Karloman’s banner had been spotted many miles south, meaning the Emperor and his army were still in the field, which did not bode well for his fellows in the south either. The Duke secluded himself inside his own chambers, beginning to drink wine more heavily than usual. It was the damned Crown, he kept thinking to himself. When he lost the Crown, he lost his luck, and the blessings of God.
The only reason none inside the town wanted to surrender was that they knew there would be no mercy on them. Duke Roamaldo was a rebel twice over now, and none were foolish enough to believe Karloman would extend his clemency twice. So when the Emperor set his banner onto the field beside his son’s and the two Frankish armies rejoined to complete the utter encirclement of the city, the defenders grimly settled in for a slow march to their own deaths…
By May, the city’s population had begun to starve. By June, the Duke felt compelled to issue a decree preventing the inhabitants from eating their own dead, for fear of the risk that this would pose to morale. All the while, the Frankish siege engines pounded relentlessly upon the wall.
On the first day of July, the Duke, exhausted and thin as a skeleton, finally bowed to the inevitable.
“Send a man out to plead for mercy for the inhabitants and ask for terms,” was the only order he gave.
The messenger was dispatched to the Frankish camp. He was returned at dusk, or rather, the remains of his headless corpse were, catapaulted over the walls by the Franks. The response was clear. No mercy. No surrender.
“So be it.” Was Roamaldo’s only response.
The following day he said goodbye to his household servants, and clothed himself in his battle armour. He was gaunt and thin now, and his plate mail did little to enhance his diminished form, but he strode out into the courtyard of his hold with a clear head.
As he mounted his battle steed, he summoned his own personal retinue to the square.
“I will not demand any of you follow me.” He told them, “If you surrender, it is possible Karloman may show you mercy, for you swore him no oath that you then broke. But if you will follow me, one last time, I shall have you.”
He waited, but among that small retinue of several dozen men that remained alive and uninjured, none of them moved to desert him. He waited silently for several long minutes. But not a man in that square moved that morn.
“Alright then,” he finally said. “Time to make an end to it.”
Those of his retinue also mounted themselves with the last of the horses, who looked as skeletal and thin as their riders, and they began to ride in a small column directly towards the south gate. A small crowd of starving, ravenous civilians gathered to watch them leave in near-silence.
“Once we fall, open the gates and I’ve no doubt you will be fed.” He told them as he left, bitterly grimacing because he knew this was a lie. I have led them to their deaths for nothing, better to not drag it out any longer than necessary. “But I do not mean to be beheaded before a screaming mob like some common thug. I shall die facing Karloman with a sword in my hand.”
And with that, he saw that huge southern gate heave open, and rode his small cavalry retinue with their half-starved horses out the gates and to their dooms…
“He died well.” Pepin gazed approvingly towards the small group of dead riders as the Duke’s standard fell from the centre of the column. “I would not have expected it of him.”
“Died well for a traitor’s cause.” Karloman dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Let’s pray the fools in the fortress see more sense than he ever did.”
Pepin glanced at his father but said nothing. In previous years such bravery might have garnered an approving comment from the Emperor, but not today. Apparently Roamaldo’s treachery had been one bridge too far for Karloman to owe even token respect to.
In any case, Mantova yielded itself up a few hours later, hoping for mercy. Karloman showed none, publicly setting up a tribunal and hosting public executions of the city’s leading figures before giving over the surviving population to the torch and sword. His men looted the fortress, and showed no mercy to any inhabitants that could not cower or flee.
“Let it stay here,” Karloman decreed coldly when the day’s slaughter was done. “Let the charred remains of Mantova be an epitath for all who would defy the Emperor and their oaths to read.”
Pepin said nothing in return, but merely swallowed down the bile he found creeping into his throat at the site of the butchery. He understood his father’s reasoning. But he did not have to like it…
In any case, the war in Italy was virtually over. With the rebellion crushed and the Peninsula secured, the Empire’s territory was once again secure. Pepin, for one, was looking forward to his return home…
Bohemia, Praha, August 796.
The small group that had raided the Frankish caravan had not been expecting Vratislav to punish them for their actions. Indeed, their raid had brought gold and glory both to their chief.
But the mere site of treasures plundered from the Frankish traders sent him into an uproar, and the Chief proceeded to castigate them for having risked drawing the ire of the Frankish Emperor into yet another conflict.
“I’d have thought you’d have learned after Bavaria,” he told them, “But apparently I overestimated you. I shan’t do so again.”
Regardless, Vratislav knew full well the risks that might come of an attack on an imperial convoy. The Frankish Emperor tolerated no meddling in his affairs, and he needed little excuse to wage vicious war against peoples who kept to the old gods, as the Bohemians did.
But Vratislav knew he could not stand against the vast Frankish armies alone. He needed help, and he intended that when the new year came, he would have it.
Within days he had riders dispatched by the dozen, riding north, east and south. Every direction and to every Kingdom and tribe he could find that still held out with the old ways, and kept faith against the rise of the Christians and their new god.
If Karloman was looking for an excuse to march east again, he would not stand alone against the inevitable. He would fight with all the tribes of the east who still remained… Bohemia would not fall…
OOC: The Italian revolt is crushed but Pagans in the east cause trouble again. It seems Karloman was in a bad mood this time around!
There'll be a Bohemian war starting up next post, and maybe some return to focus on the imperial family dynamics again. Pepin's time will come to shine one day as well, out from under his father's shadow...
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How old are Pepin and Karloman? Travelers to Bohemia may want to carry heavy supplies for the next century. Karloman is going to bring devastation. Thank you for updating.
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Yes, the war in Bohemia will require a lot of bloodshed.
As of 797 Karloman is 46 and Pepin is 28. So when the Bohemian war starts they're going to be those ages.
I will also include a map at the beginning of the next post of where things stand at the beginning of the Bohemian War since it occurs to me I've been a little slack with that lately, so some screenshots will be forthcoming to demonstrate the border changes in recent years.
Thanks for your patience everyone
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Hi everyone! Am working on another post but have been sick for the last couple of days and splitting headaches aren't conducive to writing anything much but gibberish! I am feeling much better today and am back on it, so hopefully tomorrow or Friday I will have something
Thanks for the patience and the support, as always.
Thanks for the patience and the support, as always.
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Get Better, Soon . . . PLEASE! (Even if you are not writing, I do not want you to be sick.)
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