Treasury -1437 gold
The messenger walked slowly into the room where Valentinianus was posing for his personal sculptor. He had already come to the city yesterday, but knowing the temper of the Emperor he had decided to spend one last night with a woman, no-one could say what the emperor would do when he got the rage. "Augustus, we have received word that a major revolt has taken place in Carthago Nova. Your grandson Publius decided that the situation was unwinnable, and withdrew outside the city to conserve the lives of his men. He says that at least 20.000 citizens were killed, but he did not lose a single man," the messenger said.
For a few minutes Valentinianus did not move, and the sculptor silently continued to work on the life-sized sculpture of the Emperor. Finally Valentinianus turned his head towards the messenger and asked, "Has my grandson retaken the city?"
"No, but his forces are just outside the city walls."
"Are you telling me?" the emperor said, then paused "That my grandson," he continued, then paused again "HAS LOST CARTHAGO NOVA AND THUS THE ENTIRE PROVINCE OF CARTHAGINIENSIS!" he shouted in the face of the messenger.
"Yes, but with our forces intac..." the messenger said.
"You are bringing me news that after Noricum, Illyrium and Dalmatia in the east have revolted, now the west is failing me as well. You are telling this to me? You were in the city, weren't you? Why did you come here instead of fighting to the death to keep the city? WHY ARE YOU HERE!"
"Publius, your gr... please Augustus, don't kill me," the messenger said as his legs gave up and he fell to the floor.
Valentinianus kicked the messenger a few times, and then ran around the room screaming at all the people present there what worthless family he had. Finally after throwing a few vases at the floor he calmed down and went back to the messenger. "You will leave Rome today. Tell my grandson that if he does not take back the city, he is not welcome in my realm any more. And when he does take back the city, the citizens there are to be killed and their wealth robbed. Tell him to loot it, to sack it, to exterminate it, whatever, but Carthago Nova is to be made an example what happens to cities that dare revolt." he said to the messenger. "What are you waiting for? GO!" he then shouted, and the messenger began to drag himself away. As Valentinianus moved back to continue posing for his sculptor, a few of the servants came forward to pull the messenger away for healing.
Later in the day he decided what to do about the rebellions in the east. His eldest grandson, Marcus, would march to retake Carnuntum, while his youngest, Spurius, would march from Aquinium to retake Salona. It was apparent though that the forces in Aquinium would have to be reinforced so that another rebellion did not pop up the day Spurius left for Salona.
Later on he discussed the new monetary situation with his favorite senator, Ianuarius. The loss of these provinces and their taxes threw Rome into a nightmare. He would have to disband units everywhere that he could now. After discussing they decided to disband as many Comitatenses and after that foederati infantry units as possible. Those Germanic soldiers were good, but costly to keep, and with the new freemen and peasant militias coming up, and Christian belief on the rise, the situation had improved somewhat in several cities. After all, during the last half year, except for the three rebelling capitals, there had only been unrest in 4 other capitals in contrast to the 13 capitals the last half year for a total of 39620 civilian deaths.
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Most of the disbanded units where in Italy, and Valentinianus personally held a speech to the almost 10.000 Comitatenses that where disbanded in Rome where he said he admired them for what they were, but that Rome was in need of aqueducts, ports, roads and churches now, not soldiers. The taxes were also normalized or even made heavy where possible. After all this the Roman state would not be in debt after another half year, but it would still be poor. Ianuarius pointed out that when the rebels cities would be recaptured, there would then be enough gold to start to rebuild the empire. Also, Christian missionaries all over the empire reported legions of people converting, in a decade or so the core of the nation could be expected to know the lord. One of the palace servants is known to have remarked how much it pleased Valentinianus that he was not only sawing them in this life, but in the afterlife as well.
During the year a trade-treaty was signed with the Franks. Valentinianus hoped that this would improve the economic strength of the Germanian provinces, although he said it should be apparent that one day Rome would have to get rid of those pesky barbarians, something his grandfather had been planning to do before the senate killed him. Amazing news also reached Rome from the East, where word came that a ceasefire had been signed between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanids. Valentinianus had long since lost contact with his brother, because by rights he should have been made the ruler of both the empires when their father died. Trade was still brisk though, and rumors often came from the east.
The biggest talk was however about Oppius new daughter, Honoria. It had been more than 26 years since a new family member had been born into the Imperial family, and everyone wondered if sons and daughters would start popping up everywhere now.
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Captain Ardabarus led the forces originally controlling Carnuntum, and had been ordered to besiege the city and build siege weapons that Marcus would be able to use to take the city once he got there. But instead, the rebel general and his men attacked Ardabarus forces, and as he was outnumbered he decided to pull back into the forests. The rebel general did not let go however, and sent a force consisting of archers and peasants into the forest after Ardabarus.
There Ardabarus decided to make his stand. He had one 1460 Foederati Infantry soldiers and 2160 Peasants on his side, and he hoped that his Infantry would be able to kill the enemy that only had peasants and archers, both poor fighters. He decided to wait for them in the forest and spread out his men in a loose formation, because he assumed that the enemy would march close enough to shoot at him with arrows, and then after that he would have to advance.
It all went wrong however when the enemy archers did not stop to shoot, and madly charged his forces. By the time he gave the order to form a close formation, the enemy was already on him. Because he lacked numbers or fast cavalry, he was unable to try to flank the enemy in any way, and decided to simply make a stand, hoping that his soldiers would be able to kill enough of the rebels so that they would run away.
The battle did not last long, and soon his men ran. First the foederati infantry ran away, with Ardabarus among them, and when the peasants saw this, they too became frightened and ran away. He lost 2270 men, while the enemy lost a bit over 1000 men.
Even though the battle had taken place west of Carnuntum, he managed to retreat east around to city towards Aquinium.
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Winter 364Treasury 2499 gold
The second half-year in 364 saw even less violence, this time in only 3 capitals, Avaricum, Syracuse and Augusta Treverorum. In total 49650 civilians and 4860 soldiers died.
Primus Flavius Marcus faced an army led by a Aleman captain. He had moved in front of a river crossing, and instead of going around Marcus decided to gamble and fight him. The captain withdrew before the battle could begin, and confident this was good luck, Marcus decided to move after the army, and was just about to begin combat, when his scouts reported that another Alemanni army, this one led by their king and 8800 men strong, in contrast to the less than 2000 men of the original enemy army. When he heard this Marcus decided to withdraw from battle, and he also asked that reinforcements be sent to him from the settlement to the south, Augusta Vindelicorum, just in case the barbarians decided to attack him instead.
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"Why did you have to leave me, why?" Valentinianus said as he looked at his wife's, Occelinas, body. "Why did you have to say that to me? I didn't mean to hit you. Come back. Come back!" he said, running his hand over Occelinas blue and red cheek.
The servants just looked on in silence. This time he had hit someone he loved too hard. All Occelina had demanded was that they go to Aquinium to see Spurius wedding and his new wife. Valentinianus had gone mad and shouted that the rebels controlled the area in between, and claimed that she was planning to have him killed. He had had one of his worse days, and beaten her for 10 minutes. In the beginning she had cried out for help, but the servants knew the emperor well enough that trying to help would only get oneself beaten. At least one servant who had tried to stop the emperor had been killed. But it was only in the beginning that she cried out for help, in the middle she was already silent and when Valentinianus stopped she was dead. When the Greek medical-slave had told him that the rest of the servants in the room had run away. The Greek was lucky to survive; he only had one arm and one leg broken.
After the burial Valentinianus locked himself into his palace. He told the servants that if anyone of them told anyone else what had happened, and rumors came out, he would have every single one of them killed just to be sure he killed the right person. In the rest of Rome everyone just though that Occelina had died of old age, and that Valentinianus was in an extended mourning period.
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Summer 365The summer of 363 saw continued decrease in religious violence, as this year there were only uprisings in Syracuse and Augusta Vindelicorum for a total of 11420 civilian and 520 military deaths.
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"Spurius, I am afraid. What if you don't come back?" Alypia said as she begged Spurius not to go into battle.
"Don't be afraid. The lord marches with me. I will take this here with me," Spurius said as he showed his splinters of the true cross. "Our lord was crucified on this piece of wood here. It still carries his sweat and his blood, and with this he will surely be completely on our side. What army can stand before the lord?" He also packed with him his favorite testaments and holy texts as he let Alypia admire the piece of the true cross.
"I know, but I am just afraid."
"Don't be. He is with us, and if he is not when I go to battle, we still have more and better men than the enemy. I will go with over 8.000 men, I will be surprised if the enemy has even half what I have. And there will only be peasants and archers, a good appetizer for my troops before the real battle in Salona" he said, then put the splinters of the true cross in their special box. "But pray for me in any case."
"I will. I promise."
The next day Spurius marched forward with his armies. The rebels were a few weeks march away, and when they finally reached them, the rebels decided to run away. Spurius decided that he could not let them live and return to their city, Marcus force was smaller than his, and every day that Marcus was besieging Carnuntum was one day that the entire west and north was without a mobile army that could fight the Germanian tribes.
It was about a month after he had marched from Aquinium that he reached the enemy army. He had known he was close, and decided to march trough the night instead of camping. It was a few hours before dawn that they finally met.
It turned out Spurius had been right. The enemy only had one unit of peasants and another unit of archers.
The battle began with the infantry at the front, the cavalry at the flanks, and the archers at the rear. Then he ordered the entire formation to move forward within striking distance of the enemy.
Soon however Spurius got tired of waiting, and ordered his archers to run forward so that they could begin shooting earlier so that the infantry could just keep marching constantly until they could charge the enemy.
The enemy commander saw this and sent his peasants forward to attack. It was a very short battle, as the archers only had time to shoot 3 or 4 volleys before the peasants lost heart and ran away. The fact at the point that the peasants broke the infantry was running and was just behind the archers was the probable cause for the enemy's fear. Spurius ordered his infantry and cavalry to charge the peasants, while he himself charged the remaining archers.
The rest of the battle was short and sweet, as the infantry descended upon the peasants and the archers broke almost at once when Spurius reached them. A few casualties were taken when Spurius archers kept shooting at the peasants even when the infantry was already among them, but they were quite small.
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In Carthago Nova, Publius sent word that he had too few men to be able to scale the city walls. He asked for a unit of foederati infantry to come from Tarraco to support him, but it was ambushed just a few days walk outside Tarraco by a force of over 10.000 rebel bandits. It was able to evade them and retreat back to Tarraco, but it was unable to continue towards Carthago Nova, especially as the Roman Fleet was in the waters near Rome.
Valentinianus cursed Publius loudly when word of it came to Rome, but offered that Publius could perhaps later hire mercenaries. Right now the state coffers were empty again after the decision had been made to rebuild the damaged buildings in Avaricum, the capital of Lugdinensis.
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"So, they are attacking me. Isn't that nice. Spares us the trouble of having to go up to them" Marcus said to one of his soldiers. The soldier just nodded. "How stupid of them. Do they even have a single archer with them, what do you think?" Marcus asked the soldier.
"Maybe, but it looks like they have much more cavalry than us."
"Cavalry, pah" Marcus said. "Cavalry is only good for leading men or dying on spears. I'd like to see a cavalry-charge break a well placed infantry unit, but that's not likely to happen ever, is it?" he continued and smiled at his wisdom. The soldier nodded, but still looked at the enemy cavalry.
"You, do you have better eyes than me, or is that a peasant mob in the middle of their line?" Marcus asked the soldier again.
"I don't think that's what I would call a line."
"Good point."
Then Marcus drew his lungs full of air and shouted to his soldiers "Well men, rest a while, fix your shoes, because today you will have to run very much after them if you want a kill to your name. Archers, prepare our enemies a warm welcome to Roman lands. And remember men; the only thing you have to fear is stepping in their shit once you are forced to run after them. Victory!"
"Victory! Flavius Marcus" the men replied.
The battle began as Marcus had said it would, the rain of fire made the enemy panic and the first unit to reach the left flank routed the second the Comitatenses charged. He was wrong about the cavalry however, and in the right flank there was a great battle between Marcus and the enemy commander Hortar, which ended once the Aleman spearmen there routed and Marcus infantry was able to freely charge Hortars cavalry.
During that one unit of Comitatenses had charged after the routing spearmen, and on the same time forced two of the enemies peasant-units to rout as well. Because of this the rest of the infantry was only able to fight one last unit of spearmen that had formed a ring, while Marcus charged after the routing enemies and killed hundreds of them. It was a clear victory for the Roman Empire, and Marcus hoped that the Alemanni would too frightened to attack Rome for the next five years at least.