The Sons of Raghnall: The Dacian War (out of character)

Inspiration is not striking this week, so I will merely recount the game events of the Dacian War as I saw them.

The diplomacy leading up to the war was moderately complicated, with a lot of people annoyed at other people for one reason or another, and several tangled alliances. The underlying issue was (and perhaps remains), “who is top dog in Eastern Europe?” With several minor powers – Hungary, Bavaria, Greece, Italy – the middle bits of Europe are a natural playground and area of dispute for the flanking powers, both Great and lesser. In no particular order, and noting that these are my interpretations and may not be accurate:

• Byzantium wanted to gain the two European provinces he needed for the Bosphorus Sound Toll to trigger. In the longer term, he presumably would not object to expanding further into the Balkans, with the large number of wealthy right-culture, right-religion provinces there. (Note that these are not the vanilla Balkans – being rich in CK, they converted quite well.) In view of the latter, Greece found even just two provinces quite alarming; without them, he could plant his large fleet in the Strait and keep the Legions at arms’ length.
• Russia wanted to restore Hungary to its position as “Russia’s western buffer”, either by reducing it to a minor power that would be dependent on Russia’s protection, or by forcibly realigning its foreign policy. In either case the recovery of the provinces lost to Hungary early in the fifteenth century was implied.
• Spain would, ideally, like to restore its position as undisputed leader of an alliance of all the mainland European countries; but, failing that, it wanted to strengthen Hungary and Greece so they could be its cat’s-paws in the Med and enable Spain to concentrate on the New World.
• England, offshore from all this, wanted an effective balance of power on the continent, with no power dominating.

Of the minor powers, the most interesting is Italy; as the most powerful of the lesser allies in Spain’s former coterie, it started all this by, apparently, getting a bit restless. In particular, it was subbed; the sub attacked Hungary; Hungary thought that the perm would roll it back, and didn’t fight very effectively… and the perm said, in effect, “screw our alliance, I’ma go for being hegemon in Central Europe”. There was then a Punishment War in which Spain delivered the beat-down to its former vassal-ally; Italy ended up quite a bit smaller, with much protesting about enormous harsh peaces and destroying player slots. Naturally, Italy then went looking for some new friends to help it recover, and found them. The Dacian War thus began when Italy DOWed for the recovery of what it had lost to Hungary. Byzantium and Russia joined on Italy’s side, Scandinavia and Greece on Hungary’s – not exactly a fair match. Spain separately declared war on Italy in order to maintain the settlement from the Punishment War; this brought in Spain’s ally England. France then separately declared war on Spain in, apparently, a desperate attempt at enforcing a white peace? This was never really clear to me. Finally, Benin attacked Greece over some old border dispute in Ethiopia, and Persia also invaded Greece in support of its ally Byzantium.

The Hungarian army was destroyed more or less immediately by the Russian steamroller, which in addition to its sheer size was also the first to reach land tech 13. Consequently Hungary effectively surrendered, minimising its loss of territory but, if I’m any judge, nurturing a secret hope that its allies would bail it out and it would recover at the peace table. The main clash therefore occurred in the Alps, where Russian and Roman troops met Spaniards and Englishmen fresh from victory over the Italian army. (Incidentally, it was about this time I finally accomplished my “larger army than Italy” mission.) At the same time the Greeks had been pushed down into their mountainous peninsula, but were still maintaining an army there. In Africa, Benin had exited upon achieving its territorial aims, in exchange for a promise to attack Persia; oddly enough, Persian troops were able to occupy most of Egypt in spite of this promise. Finally, France had by this point been completely subjugated by the combined weight of Spain, England, and Scandinavia, and forced out of the war with the loss of Holstein and some of its Atlantic provinces.

France, Greece, and Africa were, however, secondary theaters; the decision was reached in the Alps, where Russia and Rome bled Spain’s manpower dry. It is not clear to me precisely how Spain was defeated, nor perhaps does it matter; complaints about attrition and “winning all the battles” have reached my ears, but there’s also the land tech to consider and the plain size of All The Bloody Russias. At any rate the peace treaty reversed Spain’s gains in France (although not Holstein, presumably because the Norse army was undefeated – clearly, the Russians didn’t feel like tangling with us over a Baltic city), restored much of Italy’s former territory, and gave Byzantium the Sound Toll. Further, Hungary has signed a Long Peace with Russia and is, presumably, back in its position as Western Buffer State. England retains its naval base in Sicily, and thus its ability to project power in the Med; we shall see whether this becomes important.

The net outcome, then, is roughly the status quo from before the Punishment War: Italy did not become a Great Power capable of dominating the Med, Hungary did not gain an Adriatic coastline or a dominating position, and Eastern Europe remains a battleground for the flanking Great Powers. Byzantium achieved its aim of getting the Sound Toll, and is perhaps the biggest winner. The old CK alliance blocs are now fairly decisively broken up; the sixteenth will be anyone’s century.

I am pleased with Norway’s performance in this war; for a nice change, I didn’t lose my whole army, which for a player of my skill counts as a victory. (Yes, I’ve been known to succeed at diplomacy and persistence, but in actual game mechanics I’m pretty terrible.) I initially had all but a rebel-hunting stack over the Atlantic getting ready for another whack at the Huron (who, incidentally, should not have been given Muslim cavalry, sheesh), so it took me a while to get fully into the war. By then Hungary had surrendered, so I decided to attack France, which went very well, since his armies were over by the Bay of Biscay getting hammered by Spain. I also had to fend off some of Russia’s vassals getting frisky in Finland; Russia apparently did not particularly feel like invading the Land Of A Thousand Attritional Losses, and I decided not to make him reconsider by, for example, crossing the border in the other direction. (I did see some guard stacks just sitting about looking very land-tech-13-y; it’s not as though I could have marched unopposed to Moscow.) Getting Holstein in the separate treaty with France, I looked for other ankles to bite. I wasn’t very keen on tangling with Russia’s land tech, so I started shipping my army to Africa to help Greece retake Egypt. However, the war ended before I got more than two stacks there, so nothing came of that.

Feeling that I had fulfilled my obligations, I notified the other signatories that the Treaty of Riga from 1427, in which I was forced to sign (as in, it was this or lose provinces) an alliance with Hungary, Spain, and Byzantium against Russia, was now obsolete. With the Long Peace between Russia and Hungary, and Spain on one side of a war against Russia plus Byzantium, the diplomatic situation has clearly changed beyond all recognition. Thus, Norway is now a free agent, liberated from the shackles of 1427 and ready to become a major factor in the balance of power.

Azure Three Bezants: The Siege of Lost Cyrene

Later, even his own children discounted his story. Even the man who had done more than any other to unify the peninsula; the victor of two Crusades and innumerable Italian skirmishes – even Chiano “the Lionheart” could not make the skeptical fourteenth century see his account as anything but the griping of a commander who had had a bad siege. Men whispered about the hot desert sun, and mirages seen in far-off dunes; men spoke of horses made councillors and obsession with rats in the walls, and noted that even the greatest conquerors must eventually fight with old age, and lose.

Chiano “the Lionheart” Aiello in his elder, sadder days.

Every great family has, somewhere in its dusty cupboards, a formerly-prominent member or two whom it does not care to talk overmuch about – a victorious general with unfortunate political views, perhaps, or given to supporting the wrong side in civil wars; or a workaholic prodigy whose brilliant early years turned into an eternal middle-aged slump; or a scientific genius who turned to alchemy, astrology, and philosophy. Among the many distinguished Aiello, Chiano is surely the foremost example of the genre. The architect of Italian unification; the reconqueror of Tripolitania – the epithet “Lionheart” was not given, in the fourteenth century, for winning quilting competitions; a man who counted among his lesser achievements a building program to far outshine that of Bob “the Builder” of England – such a man might expect to have his memory revered and burnished, to be held up as an example of his family’s genius and courage, to have statues raised, books written, and institutions named in his honour. And probably Chiano did expect all these things; why not?

Then came the Second Crusade, and the siege of Cyrene – and a conspiracy of silence, ever after, among his descendants. No statues of “the Lionheart” grace Venice’s plazas; there is a Chiano Aiello Hospice, but its patron is his grand-nephew of the same name; and although no history of the fourteenth century can wholly avoid so central a figure, only those which take a critical view of him go into any depth. The official Aiello history, a hagiographic work if ever there was one, gives him only three pages – less than any other Doge, even so slight a nonentity as Pietro I, whose main achievement was to empty the family treasury to elect a short-lived successor.

That the siege of Cyrene was a disaster is not in dispute; what is odd is that it should have such an effect on the reputation of a man who had, after all, won three dozen other sieges, and would go on to win another six. Anyone can have an off day; in a splendid military career, one expensive victory ought not to be so decisive. Yet Cyrene is the linchpin; before Cyrene, the primary sources are effusive in their praise; afterwards they are as silent as they can possibly get away with. What made this apparently-insignificant siege of a minor African city so important? The answer lies with the commander on the other side of the wall, Ali Shah Anubid.

The siege of Lost Cyrene. Note the defending commander – Shah Ali himself, Kuipy’s character. Note also the ten-to-one odds of my army versus the garrison, which is about to cause me to order an assault that turns out to be a very bad idea. It did take the city, but my 8k mercenaries were left with 2k and an expected time-to-full-reinforcement of five years. Alas, I also signally failed to capture Ali.

Today, of course, the very name ‘Anubid’ speaks volumes, and immediately redeems Chiano’s reputation. That he fought one of that dynasty is all we need to know; we instantly understand his problems – and the reasons that his entirely calm and rational observations of enemy actions looked, to his uninformed contemporaries, like whining in the face of bad luck. Rats in the grain wagons, an epidemic of heatstrokes, supply ships lost to unseasonal storms – nobody disputed that the siege of Cyrene had more than its share of bad luck, but it takes the knowledgeable eye of hindsight to see the pattern, to understand what unlawful Powers were being called upon and what unearthly bargains stood between Chiano and his victory. The men of the fourteenth century, believing in a benevolent God and a rational universe, saw only excuses for a difficult campaign. They scoffed at Chiano’s factual reports; they traded surreptitious eye-rolls and embarrassed coughs; they tapped their foreheads knowingly and spoke sympathetically of the effects of heatstroke on men over fifty. The Cyrenaican campaign was swept under the rug and forgotten, along with its commander; the immense casualties of the final desperate assault on the walls, when they were mentioned at all, were made into sacrifices to a senile old man’s bloodthirst – entirely ignoring that, in the face of the difficulties of supply, Chiano had the choice of assault or retreat, and that even at immense cost he did gain the victory.

In the Long War – not the Second Crusade, but the war against the Anubids – as in so many others, truth was the first casualty; the real account of the campaign disappeared, surviving only in alchemical hints and competitively-obscure allusions in suppressed fifteenth-century works on the occult. Only in the twentieth century did scholars at Miskatonic laboriously piece together what the Anubid Shah had been doing; and that was, of course, far too late. By then the world was long familiar with the gnawing rats that somehow swarmed over only one army’s grain; the terrible storms from clear skies that never struck Egyptian fleets; familiar, above all, with the dreadful pinprick hemorrhages that affect those who linger too long near the vessel of the Jackal. The “heatstrokes” that crippled Chiano’s army of Slavic mercenaries were, as we now know, nothing of the kind, but genuine mini-strokes caused by blood vessels in the brain bursting; and Chiano’s “senility” and madness – the latter is not in scare quotes because, as we know to our cost, it is all too real – can be traced to the same cause. In this light, accounts of Shah Ali, clad in purple and gold and bearing a jackal-headed staff, appearing daily on the walls of Cyrene to cast defiance at the besiegers, take on a much more sinister aspect than that of a general encouraging his army.

With today’s knowledge, we can rescue Chiano from his undeserved obscurity, and hold him up as an early warrior in, and casualty of, the Long War. Cyrene broke his army; faced with the need to either retreat or escalade, Chiano chose attack. His hungry, ragged men followed him over the walls, but the cost was immense; fully half the veterans that had fought for Venice through the First Crusade and the Unification Wars died in the assault and in the ensuing street-battle-cum-massacre. Even after the walls were lost, the Cyrene garrison and citizen militia fought house-to-house, with the usual army-shattering effects; and Chiano’s men, goaded to utter fury by the hardships of the siege and by the stubborn (today we can say with confidence, the unnaturally stubborn) resistance, killed until their sword arms grew tired and blood splashed the sandstone houses to a man’s height. There is a reason the city is called “Lost” Cyrene; the once-important trading center is now a fishing village, huddling in the shadow of the cyclopean walls its shrunken population can no longer maintain.

A closer look at Shah Ali; note the Possession by powers it is best not to contemplate, not to mention the Evil Mustache. Fimconte should absolutely make him Grand Vizier in accordance with his ambition; a more perfect specimen it is hard to imagine. The CK interface is unfortunately not very suited to showing the difference between actual humans with free will, and camouflaging shells surrounding daemonic things squatting where there used to be souls. If left to his own devices, Ali might have been a kindly and gentle man, and hardly impaled anyone at all.

Mercenaries are expendable, and so are enemy civilians; Venice raised new armies and continued the Second Crusade. Chiano went home, to a decade of slow madness and listening to the rats gnawing at the walls of reality. The other survivors of the assault probably suffered equally, but the sources do not speak of their pain; no conspiracies of silence are needed to mask the madness of common soldiers. As for Shah Ali, he disappeared from Cyrene on the morning of the assault; in spite of intensive searches, no secret tunnels or other natural escape routes were ever found – but then, this can hardly surprise anyone today. His victims, on both sides, were probably not too surprised either; it has taken centuries for official chroniclers to admit the uncanny in writing, but those close to the Jackal’s vessels have always known the truth.

Such was the first meeting of the two Alpha dynasties of the Mediterranean world, Aiello and Anubid; it was not to be the last.

From Early Skirmishes in the Long War,
Dr William Wilcox,
Miskatonic University Press, (C) 1989.

So I may have slightly underestimated the size of army I needed to take a city by assault; turns out ten-to-one odds isn’t such a great rule of thumb when most of your army is light infantry. Nonetheless, since all the Caliphate’s armies are busy fighting the Second Crusade up and down the delta of the Nile, things worked out and it seems likely I’ll be able to exit the war with my loot. Capturing Kuipy’s character would have been interesting, but not necessary to the slow accumulation of warscore.

Unorganised Italy is no more; other than the Pope – and a Pope who does not hold Rome is only another bishop – everything is now held by players. This is also true of the rest of the map, with only a few tiny holdouts. Blobbification complete; from here on, expansion is zero-sum. Negotiations are however underway to unite Italy under my rule.

Just a side note: The husband is Lunatic, the wife is Possessed. What a team, eh?

Gains and losses in Italy and the Balkans are mainly the results of diplomatic deals; there will likely be more to come. The exception is Capua. Currently engaged in a holy war for Cyrenaica, but the future African borders are a bit up in the air.

The Sons of Raghnall: The Dacian War

Sigh. I intended to write a paragraph or two about the Huron, as an aside before turning to the European conflict…

Azure Three Bezants: The Wolf on the Fold

February 10th, 1333
Delta of the Nile, near Alexandria
Noon

“The Syrian came down like the wolf on the fold,” Pietro quoted to himself, and grinned savagely. His people had fought the Syrians before, and neither side had enjoyed the experience. He rather thought, though, that this time there would be no tribute paid to Damascus.

Which was just as well, for the army he led was fearsomely expensive – not so much for the mercenaries scrambling up the steeply sloped river bank behind him, Slavs and Bulgars would fight for little more than their salt; but even wealthy Venice strained to feed its back streets when the fishermen and labourers who brought their peacetime food were mobilised for the galleys. That was why the Senate disliked overseas wars; ironic, for a naval power, but it was just cheaper to fight in places you could march to.

Still, mobilising the Fleet had its tactical advantages. For example, you could embark ten thousand men early in the morning and loiter off the coast for a few hours, until a courier brought word that your allies were fully engaged; then row up the Bolbitine Nile to a point a little behind the Syrian right. And then you could beach the shallow-drafted galleys right on the riverbank, and unload eight thousand Slavic mercenaries and two thousand Venetian citizens. Not an immense force, by the standards of the Levant; though enough, probably, to have tipped the scales, if they had merely lent their weight to the Greek line. Then they would have driven the Syrians back in disarray, and forced them to retreat – unless, perchance, a regiment wavered at just the wrong time and the Syrian pikes pushed through the shield wall to unravel the line. That was luck, and luck cut both ways; you could do no better than to load the odds in your favour – if you chose to lend an allied army’s weight to an already-strong line. And you could win victories that way, if victory was to force your enemy to retreat, to make him march for his base of supply and his fortresses in good order and his own time. To win big, to break your enemy’s army and make it run – for that you had to gamble.

It wasn’t that much of a gamble, perhaps, to come up on the flank of an army attacking almost its own number; but it did rely on the Greeks standing firm for the time it took the Venetians to row up the Bolbitine, and on finding the right place to disembark. As he crested the slight ridge that hid the river, Pietro saw with relief that both opportunities for failure – and subsequent defeat in detail, and death in a foreign land – had been missed. The flood plain fairly crawled with soldiers, fifty or sixty thousand men, and they were still fighting; the blue-on-white standards of Greece still stood alongside the unheraldic banner of the Lazuli, gules a wyvern azure segreant in sinister. The banners were almost the only colour in the vast heaving brown-and-gray masses; no purple and gold in this army, except perhaps among the highest officers. Which had probably been true of Sennacherib’s army as well; and seeing the immense area that a mere sixty thousand men occupied, Pietro had to admit that he had his doubts about the hundred-eighty-five thousand, Holy Writ or none.

He was snapped out of his historic-philosophical distraction by movement nearby; horsemen, in turbans and flowing white thawbs that marked them as Arabs. Cold crawled up his spine as the third and unlikeliest thing that could go wrong happened right in front of his eyes: Enemy cavalry close to the landing point, in reasonable order, and under an officer with a reasonable amount of balls and brains. They weren’t many, perhaps no more than three hundred; but until the Venetian force was fully disembarked and formed up in its regiments, it was hideously vulnerable to cavalry attack. Three hundred veteran Arabs could range up and down the river bank cutting men down while they tried to wade ashore and get into order; eventually numbers would tell, but the disorder they would cause could delay the attack by two hours – and who knew what might happen in that time?

In particular, they could bring up reinforcements, Pietro thought, and winced to see the thought confirmed before it was finished; two of the Arab cavalrymen broke off and galloped west, towards their main body. The rest began to trot towards the ridge, scimitars out.

Pietro thought fast. If he ran back down the slope, he could get aboard a galley and organise enough men to form a square from a safe place. It wasn’t as though there were very many of them, it was just that they were formed up and ready to fight and his men weren’t. But running in the muddy Delta soil, against the current of men coming up from the boats, and getting enough of them to listen to an officer shouting from offshore while Arab horsemen charged down the ridge – no, there wasn’t time. Not if he was going to get to safety first.

But there was time, just barely, if he stood his ground, and if the men behind him were fast on their feet. If they didn’t listen, or fumbled, Pietro would die with an Arab scimitar in his spine. He gritted his teeth against fear and made his decision.

“Ranks!” he shouted, at the top of his lungs. “Form ranks! Close up!” He grabbed two mercenaries who had been just behind him, and physically pushed them together; their faces registered annoyance, then shock and fear as they spotted the horsemen, then relief that the damn interfering officer had grasped the situation and was doing the only thing that could save their lives. “Form ranks!” one of them yelled, adding his voice to Pietro’s; the other began calling out to his friends, adding urgent curse-words in some guttural Slavic tongue. That worked; men heard, and ran instead of walking – not every which way in panic, but towards the little knot of command, the seed crystal of order.

They were still only two dozen, when the Arabs reached the ridge; but two dozen soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, spears and swords forming a bristling barrier that no horse would willingly try, were an entirely different affair from two dozen men walking casually up the slope to take a look at the battle. The Arab cavalry split in two, curving round to either side of Pietro’s tiny unit to come in behind them. But behind Pietro’s line were another three dozen soldiers, men who had been too far down the slope to reach it in time but who had been given time and warning to form clumps of six or ten, to stand back-to-back and threaten to impale any horse that got too close. Men still fell under the Arab charge, men caught too far from their comrades to join the tiny squares, or frozen with indecision, or too slow to understand what was going on; but it wasn’t a massacre, as would have happened if the first man up the ridge had tried to guarantee his own safety by running. The Arabs were slowed by the need to maneuver between defending formations, and split apart; instead of charging down the slope in a single glorious flood, killing as they went, they found themselves going in trickles and rivulets, losing the momentum they needed to fight thirty times their own number.

Their officer was no fool; realising that he had lost the crucial fifteen seconds that would have delayed the Venetian attack by two hours, he turned his men around and rode hell-for-leather away from the river. Clearly he intended to come back with friends and have another go at spoiling the flank attack. But he was too late; the moment was lost when three hundred men could have turned the course of the battle, and now it would take a third of the Emir’s army to match Pietro’s attack – a third of the army still hammering at the Greek line. Pietro bared his teeth in satisfaction at their retreating backs, the turned his attention to forming some better ranks for the actual attack. By nightfall, there would be no more nonsense about “unsmote by the sword”.

I’m contributing! About one-fifth of the victorious Crusader army is mine, unloaded from ships at just the right moment for victory. It looked to me like Oddman was trying to send his 30k army to Tripolitania where I was sieging, to defeat me in detail; fortunately I saw it coming and jumped aboard the fleet. Not sure why we ended up fighting in Egypt, perhaps he was hoping to defeat the Greeks sieging the Delta. Didn’t work out for him, if so.

This week there was a great Crusade, and much slaughter among the infidel; Venetian troops crossed the Mediterranean to campaign once more in the desert, where they made a definite contribution to victory over Syria. To be sure, with England (and its player vassals), Spain, Germany, and both the Russias all attacking the Caliphate, the military outcome couldn’t be much in doubt. Nonetheless, by clever diplomatic maneuvering – specifically, sending peace offers saying “you surrender” and hoping that the other side would read “I surrender” and accept – the Caliph did manage to cheat Spain out of all its gain. (Everybody else apparently actually read the text of the peace offer before clicking.) Germany, also, was forced out of the war when everybody else had got their bit; the Caliph had managed to retain his army in being, and defended his Levantine possessions ably enough when he wasn’t outnumbered three to one. Nonetheless, a good portion of the Caliphate gains of the previous sessions are now gone, in Africa, Anatolia, and Russia. Still it has to be said that these are imperial outliers, border marches, and highly expendable; the real core of Caliphate strength, the Iranian highlands and Mesopotamian floodplains, haven’t been touched.

Venice recovered Tripolitania, and also had some minor victories in Italy, so the weekly map looks much nicer:

Not much left of Unorganised Italy. Tripolitania is not actually very important economically or militarily, but it sure looks nice on the map. Note the bilious Russian green making a reappearance in the Caucasus.

Azure Three Bezants: The Arguments of Kings

These documents have been extracted from chanceries all over Europe and the Middle East; they form an authentic record of the events leading to the Unfought War. For the benefit of formality-challenged modern readers the high language of medieval diplomacy is followed by translations into the vernacular. For clarity, each correspondent has been assigned a colour, the modern translations are in coloured italics, and modern commentary is in plain text.

There are two republics in this game, but only one of them does much talking. I do not say which is the wiser approach.

From His Serene Highness, Doge Abramo Aiello of Venice, Admiral of the Adriatic Sea, to His Excellency the Wallah-Emir Admer Almohad, President of the Almohad Republic: Greeting! It has come to our Serene attention that at Lykia, merchants of the Almohads have gained for themselves a trading privilege, and are trafficking in the goods of that place and of the lands beyond. We rejoice in your good fortune, surely a blessing from that God we share and from Whom all good things flow, and wish to increase it. At Rome our own merchants trade daily in grain and linen, in wine and olives, in paper and dates, with great profit and security. Yet the storied wealth of the Aiello flows mainly from the Levant; and Lykia is far from Morocco. Would it not increase both our capitals, and create still greater profit to provide for our children and countrymen, were we to exchange our privileges, so that Almohad traded in Rome, and Aiello, in Lykia?

I noticed you’ve got some stuff that would be really useful to me; seems like I’ve got some stuff that would be more useful to you than that other stuff; trade?

Doge Abramo’s offer appears to have been well meant, though it is worth noting that the Almohad trading post at Lykia interrupted what was otherwise an Aiello monopoly from Egypt to the Black Sea, and no doubt cut deeply into his profits – without, however, making a corresponding profit for the Almohads, who had no great trading network to draw on. Thus, the proffered exchange would almost certainly be mutually beneficial, albeit with the greater benefit going to Abramo.

The Big Bad Wolf in person, also known as the Wicked Warden of the West; Robert of Shrewsbury, God-Emperor of Mankind Britannia!

From His Britannic Majesty, Robert, Second of that Name, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Warden of the West; to His Serene Highness: It has come to Our Royal attention that you have corresponded with Our vassal, the esteemed Emir Admer, of the Almohads. We remind you that you trade in Our possessions by Our Grace, and that at Our word the harbours of the West are closed to your ships; and advise you to tread but lightly.

I hear you’ve been talking with my people. Just remember I can kick your guys out of my turf any time I want. You be polite and don’t diss anyone, and we won’t have a problem. Because if I have a problem, I make it your problem.

It appears, from other documents, that Robert’s letter was intended in a jocular spirit, not a serious threat but a mere jest – poking fun, perhaps, at Abramo’s very serious concentration on merely mercantile affairs. The high nobility of Europe, at this time, were not given to concerning themselves with things that could not be fought, hunted, or bedded; and Robert II in particular is an epitome of their boisterous-brawler style. An alternate translation, therefore, might run Hey nerd, made any money lately? Lol! Just don’t get any nerd-cooties on me and you won’t be paying for my lunch today. If so, good king Robert was ill-served by his chancery, who appear to have sucked all the humour out of his message, carefully dried it for storage and later use, and sent off formal words devoid of any indication that they were not unkindly meant.

From His Serene Highness, the Doge of Venice; to his overlord, the Most Holy, Most Roman, and Most Imperial Emperor of Germany, Martin the First; also to the Ayatollah Ga’vriel, Shahanshah, Emperor of Iran and non-Iran, the Successor of Mohammad, and to his leal vassal, Ghazi Shah; also to Ida, Queen of Denmark; also to Grand Prince Gleb of Kiev, By the Grace of God, Czar of Half the Russias, Heir of Norway, Supreme Necromancer of the Zombie Cossacks, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth: Noble and illustrious lords, in the West there is a Great Power. This is well enough while the Three Little Pigs build their housen of straws and of sticks, and do not meddle in the business of others; but now comes the Big Bad Wolf, and makes threats and gives orders to men not his vassals. Well then, should we not be only lambs ourselves, and not fitted to lie down with lions, if we merely watched him huff, and puff, and blow our brick housen down? Let us prepare a cauldron, and make for ourselves a good hot soup.

Seems like this guy Bobbi thinks he can throw his weight around. Well, I admit he’s got some weight, but enough for all of us together? I don’t think. What do you say, gents?

Abramo has a problem – in fact he has two problems: The first one is that he thinks he’s being threatened by the world’s largest empire. His second problem is, he needs to communicate with his possible allies, while taking into account that letters may be lost, intercepted, and end up in wrong hands – and he has no encryption. Thus he speaks metaphorically and elliptically, in an attempt at plausible deniability; but errs on the side of clarity. The “Three Little Pigs” refers to the arms of House Shrewsbury, “per pale argent and or, three boars gules,” and the “Big Bad Wolf” and the making of a cauldron of boiling water need no translation. As we will see, it is Abramo who ends up bathing in the hot soup.

Fair is fair; even aside from the Zombie Cossacks demanding double pay, the Czar of Half the Russias has trouble enough on his borders.

Grand Prince Gleb of Kiev, By the Grace of God, Czar of Half the Russias, Heir of Norway, Supreme Necromancer of the Zombie Cossacks, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, to His Serene Highness: The Big Bad Wolf is, indeed, Big and Bad, and the noise of his huffing and puffing has reached even to Kiev. Regrettably, however, closer wolves press me; in the steppes we must deal with entire packs of them, and some of them do not eat pig. At the present time, therefore, I must regrettably decline your kind offer of soup.

I hear you, but I’ve got troubles right here at home. Sorry, man, no can do.

Like Abramo, Gleb is being somewhat cagey; but a glance at the map suffices to tell us which wolves “that do not eat pig” he was worried about. The Caliphate, at this time, reached well into the Caucasus and threatened to spill out into the Don basin.

Dat Martial score… but why is his wife wearing a dead rodent on her forehead?

His Illustriousness, Ghazi Shah, Satrap of Syria, to His Serene Highness: The Prophet, praise be upon him, has said that when three speak of secrets in the palace at evening, either two die in the night or all the bazaar knows in the morning what was said. This is reported in the Sufficient Book; and although some scholars regard it as di’af, I have myself experienced its truth.

Dude, keep it close to your vest. You’ve got like a dozen people in on this. The only thing that’s certain is that at least two of them are kissing Robert’s ass.

Modern versions of the Kitab al-Kafi do not contain any hadith having to do with how many people can keep a secret; but whether inspired by Mohammad or not, Ghazi’s concern was well founded, as the next document shows.

His Britannic Majesty, Robert, Second of that Name, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Warden of the West; to the man, Abramo Aiello, styled by some, Doge of Venice: Have not our fathers helped yours to the sovereignty of the Adriatic? Have not the men of Britain fought Turks, Croatians, and indeed Sicilians on your behalf, yea, even with death on the line? Yet it seems there is a Providence in the world, and it loves not a betrayer. For memory of the ancient friendship between our peoples, I offer you self-judgement: What will you give, to repair this harm planned for Our person?

I helped you get all that stuff, and this is what I get for thanks? Too bad, looks like it didn’t work out for you. Now I’mma let you finish this thing; you tell me what you’re going to do to make it good again.

Like most bullies, Robert isn’t any too pleased if a victim shows any sign of not passively submitting.

I would be cruel too, if I was a Genius surrounded by idiot vassals who kept getting me into wars with way-more-powerful emperors.

His Imperial and August Majesty, Martin, First of that Name, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, to his leal vassal, Abramo Aiello, and also to the crowned heads of Europe: Most illustrious lords and majesties, we are most unhappily displeased that the Warden of the West should have come to think, through the lying tongues of unfaithful servants, that any of our company might wish to oppose him, even in the smallest of his desires. We wish to assure you that such a thing has never been in Our mind; and most earnestly enjoin and entreat you to make assurance to His Britannic Majesty that no harm to his interests has been entrained.

Holy shit, who narked? We fucked.

His Imperial and August Majesty seems excessively concerned for a ruler who had not lifted his pen to take part in the conspiracy, such as it was; but then, perhaps he was worried that he would be blamed for the actions of his vassal.

His Serene Highness, Abramo Aiello, Doge of Venice; to His Britannic Majesty: It was your Majesty’s word that broke our bond. Your Majesty has rich estates and wide lands in England and France, in Iberia and in Africa; we of Venice have only our trade, and must needs look to its defense, if any threatens it. But if you say your word was spoken in jest, it is well, and already forgotten; let us merely tend our affairs, each to his own, and say no more of it.

Dude, you started it! How about, bygones, we just make the trade I suggested in the first place?

Abramo must have known that this would not work, but what was he going to say?

His Britannic Majesty to Doge Abramo: Very well, let there be peace. As surety for your good behaviour, you will surrender the fortress islands of Malta and Crete; and no more shall be said of the affair.

Ok, just give me your lunch money and I’ll let it go for now.

The ruler of the second Great Power in the world, who might have made a go of reducing the first one, but chose instead to pick up African scraps.

The Ayatollah Ga’vriel, Successor of Mohammad, Emperor of Iran and non-Iran, to the infidel merchant, Abramo Aiello: In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the all-Merciful, we request and require that you surrender those parts of the House of Peace which you, an infidel, unlawfully and impiously rule; and in particular, that the Land of Three Cities, Tripolitania, from Benghazi in the east even unto the border of Tunis, shall be given up to Our appointed satraps.

Hey, while you’re down there anyway, why don’t you give my boots a lick? I guess you’re not buying lunch today, but I’ll take an IOU for tomorrow, if you don’t mind.

His Illustriousness, Ghazi Shah, Satrap of Syria, to His Serene Highness: Let it not be said that no warning was given; it is said (although not by the Prophet) that a word is sufficient to the wise. The provinces of Sinai are anciently part of the House of Peace, and their rule by an infidel is an affront unto Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful; and as my astrologers have vouchsafed to me that this is an auspicious year for righting wrongs (as the Prophet, praise be upon him, enjoins all rulers to do), I have decided to restore lawful order to that area.

Dude, I told you to be careful. So, nothing personal, but I got to take care of my own lookout, you know? So if you’d just hand over that stuff – yeah, thanks, we cool. You take care now.

The opportunism of the Muslim powers was much noted at the time; vengeance for conspiracy to overthrow was one thing, and understood, but to simply fall upon a fellow ruler for no better reason than his being in difficulty and unable to resist, that was something else again. Venice might possibly have fought Syria to a standstill; against the two Great Powers of the medieval world, Abramo did not even bother to mobilise his fleet, but submitted to the ultimata, saving his fighting men for a better day.

No letters of the Almohad Emir have survived to tell us what the man who caused the whole affair thought.

So… not my finest hour in diplomacy, there. Africa I can live without, it was always going to be an imperial march and expendable; but I have to admit that the loss of Malta and Crete stings. I assuaged my feelings by beating up a bit on the few remaining AIs in Italy, but the map does not look too good this week; gains in red, losses in black. I’m not quite sure how I lost Ancona – some sort of inheritance shenanigans? Note the splitting up of empires, intended to get enough time for kingdoms to de-jure drift into the new titles before conversion: Spain is now independent from Britannia (though still allied), and Syria from Persia.

Central Med, 1327, with the massive Venetian losses marked in black. Note the new colours in southern France and in the Levant.

The Sons of Raghnall: Savage Rites

April 10th, 1463
Somewhere in North America, near the Great Lakes
Morning

The deep forest lowered all around the column, silently oppressive. This sort of climax forest had not been seen in Europe for hundreds of years; not, at any rate, in the civilised western parts, where ax and plow had been at work since before the Romans. Perhaps the depths of Russia concealed such trees; but no civilised men lived there – or here. There as here, the deep woods were the haunt of savages, fur-clad men who hunted for a living, or scratched a few fields of scraggly vegetables between the trees. Here, at least, they built palisades around their villages, wooden things perhaps twice man-height, made from raw tree-trunks as thick around as a man could reach. Vegard had seen it move men to cold rage or helpless laughter, that such timber should be wasted on a fortification that would have been laughed to scorn in Europe. But in truth they served well enough in this trackless waste, where it was impossible to move a siege train, or to feed an army large enough to invest such a village. The natives would light their beacons, and the smoke pillar would rise to the heavens, a mute signal of foes. Within a week the woods would be alive with their friends and relatives, and any army of practical size would be swamped.

But now they had the solution for that, and Vegard grinned savagely at his invention. The little leather cannon – a copper tube wrapped in leather and rope – would be useless in civilised lands. A stone wall would hardly notice the impact of the three-pound ball it fired. But three men could portage it through trackless waste; and against a mere wooden palisade, it was heavy enough. Two villages had submitted already, each after less than a day of bombardment, with only five men of Vegard’s column killed. It was a far cry from the campaign of last year, when every village had to be taken by escalade, or else left alone. The savages did not have a field army as such – a forest army? – but their League could call in fighting men from hundreds of miles around, and would if you gave it the target of sitting down to siege. Keep moving, hit hard and fast, that was the only way.

A wild screech interrupted his thoughts. It rose from all around, a terrifying, primal sound; Vegard’s heart was suddenly in his mouth, and he drew a sharp breath as his testicles tried to crawl up into his stomach. If they were all around, then – but the screams had done their job, had paralysed his thoughts just long enough that the natives had the initiative. Now they came crashing out of the underbrush where they had hidden, invisible, on every side; and Vegard’s men were strung out in a column. Seconds mattered, and they were already lost: If the Norwegians had been in motion, they might have formed a square, stood back-to-back and thrown back the assault. But they had startled and stopped, and there was no momentum to move them together; each man, each little group, would have to stand and fight on their own – and there could be only one outcome of that.

Still, you had to try. Vegard drew his sword and skewered the lithe warrior who had leapt to brain him with a war club; the man was all sinew and muscle, and fast as a viper, but the natives still weren’t used to thrusting weapons. “Form on me!” he shouted, trained voice cutting through the brabble of screams and war cries as it would cut through a storm. “Get together or we’re all dead! Rally on me, for your lives!” His men heard, believed, acted; but it was too late, the ambush had been too savagely successful. They stumbled towards him, the closest men forming a little clot, a seed around which a square could have been built – but most of the column would never reach him; the natives were in among them, and each man had to defend himself. There was no time to form the square as well as fighting for their lives; so they died.

Vegard’s breath rasped in his throat with despair and anger; dammit, this wasn’t fair! He screamed out his frustration as his sword flashed past another war club and into a throat. It stuck in the vertebra. He pulled at it, then gave it up as a bad job and went for his dagger. The club that hit him was a dark blur at the edge of his vision.

—————————————-

April 11th, 1463
Somewhere in North America, near the Great Lakes
Morning

The first thing he was aware of was an immense nausea; he rolled over and vomited, bile pouring through his nose. When his retches – though not his wretchedness – finally subsided, he looked up, subliminally aware that he was not alone; a man sat cross-legged by the blanket he lay on, with the air of someone who has waited a long time. His head pounded from the motion.

“Good morning,” his – captor? – said, speaking accented Norse. That wasn’t unusual; many of the tribes learned a bit for trade. What was unusual was the man’s colouring; he was blonde, fair-skinned, blue-eyed – in fact his beard had the classic red-gold tint usually associated with MacRaghnalls, though he didn’t have the famous nose. But he was dressed like a native warrior, skins and beads, a metal trade axe – a sign of high status and wealth – hanging from his belt.

Vegard licked his lips, unsure what was going on. “Good morning,” he tried tentatively.

“I am Mukki,” the man said. “I am a citizen of the League. You, on the other hand, are a prisoner. Now there are two things that can happen to prisoners who have killed League citizens. You can be adopted to replace the man you slew.” Mukki paused, raising an eyebrow, but Vegard was too sick and confused to react visibly. What kind of people would adopt a prisoner? Did they expect him to become loyal to their savagery, a man who had noble blood? But perhaps it was a euphemism, or a bad translation; it might mean slavery. Mukki continued: “The other option is for the tribe to assuage the widow’s grief by burning your skin with flaming torches until you die.”

“I see,” Vegard said. ‘Adoption’ might be slavery, but it would still be preferable to death by torture; he tended to doubt that “flaming torches” was a euphemism. “And are you to judge in my case?”

“No; that will be done tonight, when you run the gauntlet. I’m here to give you fair warning. Don’t cry out, don’t scream, don’t even grimace in pain if you can help it. A coward is not a suitable replacement. If you would live, show no reaction to anything that’s done to you.”

“And after this treatment, you expect loyalty?”

Mukki smiled grimly. “Where are you going to run? And besides,” he shrugged, “some men do come to prefer the League over civilisation. The women do all the farming; men are expected to hunt, fight, and fuck. It’s a good life in many ways. Once you have a woman, especially if she bears children… well. Blood is a heavy bond. But it’s a moot point if you scream during the gauntlet.”

Vegard nodded. “Thank you for the warning.” He felt dizzy and strange, and quite unsure whether he could keep a stoic face if anyone so much as shouted at him. Perhaps if he had some water and food he would feel better. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, looking sharply at Mukki. What was in it for him?

“I am a citizen of the League,” Mukki said. “But your question of loyalty was a good one. I am not fully trusted. Perhaps that can’t be helped; it’s not a bad life here, all told. But – perhaps if we were many Norse together, something might happen. There’s power in numbers, and power in allies. So – ” he shrugged. “Perhaps it will come to nothing. Not many people have the ability not to flinch from hard blows. But I’m a patient man. In ten years, in twenty, if this off-and-on war continues – there might be quite a few of us adopted into the tribes. And then – who knows? Not me. But this is a rich land. It would be good to become a power in it.” Mukki rose abruptly, signifying the end of the talk. “There’s water and food in that basket. I suggest you eat sparingly, to prepare for your ordeal. Onatah is particularly angry; this is the second husband she’s lost. You will have a job to convince her.”

Azure Three Bezants: Six Narrow Escapes

It is true: Obviously I should have been more suspicious. That’s why I’m writing this down, as a warning. Descendant of mine, who reads this, listen to the voice of experience, heed your grandfather who has seen much and learned many things: Don’t trust the Aiello.

Would you buy an officer’s commission from this man? Cheap?

First Escape

I said I should have been more suspicious, but it wasn’t as though I had great faith in the good intentions of Abramo; after all I watched him buy the Doge’s robes that should have been mine. The problem was that I suspected the wrong thing: I thought his health was failing and he wanted me out of the city at a crucial time for campaigning. And what’s more, I thought he was being rather stupid about it; I didn’t need to be in the city to campaign effectively – the electors know quite well who the money comes from even if they don’t see his face – and a bit of military experience was just what I needed to round out my resume. So I thanked him kindly and said, why yes, it would be an honour to lead Venetian troops in the field. Which was true; but note the lessons: One, don’t assume that you understand an enemy’s plot just because you see one obvious disadvantage to yourself. Two, and this applies more specifically to the Aiello, don’t look for a hidden dagger before you’ve checked for sledgehammers.

Not that I would dream of assassinating anyone just because they were making the election immensely expensive. The more so when he has diplomacy 28 and nobody dislikes him enough to say a harsh word in his direction.

So, as ordered – like a fool – I took ship (one of my own galleys, in fact) for Lecce, spent a week there gathering our garrisons and recruiting them up to strength, and marched north for the siege of Bari to reinforce and take command of the Army of Apulia. And, just as Abramo had planned, we ran right into what was left of the Sicilian levies, retreating south into Calabria to try to recover from their defeat and come back for another go. After the beating we’d given them at Bari there were only five hundred unwounded men who hadn’t deserted; but I’m here to tell you, five hundred men is a large army when you are yourself leading two hundred, not expecting any trouble, and the five hundred spot you first and joyfully seize the opportunity to get some of their own back.

Had Abramo told the Sicilians where to find us? Call me insufficiently suspicious, but I don’t actually believe that of him. If nothing else, outright treason is hard to hide; he couldn’t very well have served as his own courier. But there are only so many roads an army retreating south from a defeat at Bari can take; only so many routes for reinforcements heading up from Lecce. The enemy commander and I were both taking the obvious route, the old Roman road along the coast. It was, at any rate, a good bet for Abramo: An excellent chance for his rival to run into a superior enemy and get himself killed, and if it didn’t work out, well, sieges are chancy things too. And much more deniable than the crude means his grandfather Pietro had used, knives in the dark and poisoned wine. But then, by all accounts, Pietro wasn’t the best-polished coin in the purse.

Demetrio Contarini, some years before these events; when he describes himself as “Not a Great Captain”, it is fair to say that he is not being unduly modest. Nonetheless, he does have the essential skill of extracting himself from lost battles.

I’m no Great Captain, but I can count to five without looking at my fingers; at odds of five to two I wasn’t going to fight any battles. But it’s not entirely trivial to get two hundred men to turn around; they all spoke some thick southern dialect, slow as molasses and twice as sticky, and seemed to have some difficulty with my crisp Venetian consonants. Being honest, they were none of them all that bright, either, even the officers. And as for their women! But fair is fair, the women were actually the most useful people in the entire army: We left them in our dust, and they distracted the enemy long enough for us to get away. Most of us. The important ones, anyway – that is to say, me.

Second Escape

You might think, after this little adventure, that I’d look twice at any further “opportunities” for military glory in Apulia; and you’d be right. But, to speak truth, losing my entire army three days’ march out of Lecce – even if it was a tiny one – didn’t do me any good with the electorate. And even with a second look, there really didn’t seem to be any way for the second one to go wrong: No raising the garrisons in Lecce this time, just sail to Bari, take command, finish the siege, come home a hero, win the election. Still, I took precautions; instead of going in my own personal galley, I brought the entire Contarini war-fleet with me. If Abramo had arranged for me to “accidentally” meet any warships the Sicilians might still have had, well, they had the good sense to stay out of our way; we never saw any. No, it was the storm that got me this time. At least it struck far enough north that when I crawled ashore from the shipwreck, I was on Venetian soil. So I didn’t have to make my way through hostile countryside; I just had to get to a city with one of our factors in it, and commandeer a ship to take me back to Venice. And on the credit side of the ledger, fully half the fleet survived. Nonetheless, I must say I was not in the best possible mood when we entered the Laguna.

Third Escape

In hindsight, I should perhaps have admitted, at this point, that I’m just not cut out for military glory, cut my losses, and campaigned on being the richest patrician in the city. But I was angry, and had blood in my eye; and anyway it wasn’t as though Abramo could have caused the storm. Enemy warships, possibly, but I had a counter for that; storms, no – or if he could, then he had no need for elaborate plotting to get rid of me! So I gritted my teeth and said I’d try again.

This time, at least, I reached Bari; and so far as I could see the siege was going well. We had galleys outside the harbour and fortified camps astride every road. I don’t say there was no food getting in, there’s always some little leak through secret gates and down ropes over the wall, at night when the patrols can’t see. But they were surely getting hungry in there, and there was no hope of any relief; the Sicilian army was still licking its wounds in Calabria. So it looked good; and that was when the camp flux became epidemic, with the autumn rains.

Of course Abramo couldn’t very well have arranged either the rains or the flux; but then, why would he need to? He knew perfectly well, and so does every child of three, that epidemics go with sieges as risk does with profit. For that matter, he would have had monthly reports detailing the number of people killed. To send a man nearing sixty into such a place, when the siege had been going on since the beginning of the year and the rains were just coming on to make the swamps extra marshy… well, as assassinations plots go you wouldn’t call it subtle. Deniable, yes; subtle, no.

If the city had been about to surrender I might have risked it for a week or so; but our spies said they still had rats and dogs enough to last them two months, and that their mayor was negotiating with Pisa for an army to lift the siege, in exchange for allegiance. Clever of him, though nothing ever came of it; but it meant I’d have to stay in that unhealthy air for months, not days, if I wanted the triumph of entering the city. I weighed the odds, and concluded that dead men are rarely elected Doge; a week later I was back in Venice. At least, this time, I wasn’t fleeing disaster.

Fourth Escape

A page has been torn from the manuscript here, and in a different hand is written: I have removed this tale to preserve my grandfather’s memory. Any future Contarini who want to dishonour themselves will have to invent their own stratagems; they shall have no help from their ancestors.

Fifth Escape

After that episode, my credit wasn’t any too high in Venice; if Abramo had done Giacomo a favour and died that week, I wouldn’t have bothered spending money on the election. But to give the bastard his due, he didn’t commit suicide for political reasons; some things, apparently, are too low even for an Aiello. Electoral memories are short, and there’s always some new gossip; if I got out of the city for a while, things would eventually blow over and enough gold would put me back in contention. So you might wonder, if you had a suspicious nature, why did Abramo offer me yet another commission? But then, there was nothing preventing me from taking an extended trip to the Contarini estates in Ragusa; and that would be quite unlikely to kill me. We were both gambling, then: Abramo, that this time the Sicilians would finally kill me for him; me, that this time I’d finally get the victory and glory that would tip the election to me.

Unfortunately, I had to give him odds: When he ordered me to collect some of our Umbrian garrisons, to make up for the losses we’d suffered in the camp flux, I couldn’t very well object. So that is how I came to be marching across the purple Apennine with four hundred men, right into a rebel ambush.

The worst thing was, the damn rebels were on our side! Or we were on theirs, if you prefer; or at any rate, we were both at war with King Tador. But they, thick Campanian peasants that they were, apparently thought that we were Tador’s troops come to restore them to obedience; or they just didn’t like having armed men come through their district. In any case, thick-headed or not, it was a beautiful ambush. If I hadn’t come prepared, not a man of us would have escaped. But, if I’m no Alexander the Great, still I’m not slow. I was, in fact, mounted on the fastest horse money would buy; its price was not that far off being its weight in silver, and worth every ounce. The moment I realised what was happening, I spurred my horse north. The soldiers were better off without me – their own officers knew better than I what to do, and spoke in an Umbrian burr that they understood without time-consuming repetitions. And, obviously, I was better off without them, free to take my horse in whatever direction offered escape; if they won, I could always come back and resume the command. So it was a mututally beneficial transaction, and if I alone escaped to speak of it, that’s not my fault; obviously they should have fought harder.

Sixth Escape

The massacre actually worked in my favour; as the only survivor, I could tell my own tale of what had happened, and (as you may know; if my chroniclers do their jobs, all Venice is well aware of my glorious exploits, and will remain so well into the next century) the account I gave differed in some minor details from the one I’ve set down here. So I was somewhat more sanguine about my chances in the election. Notwithstanding, Abramo had the nerve to offer me yet another command! But enough is enough; I told him where to stick his command, and ended my military career on an up note. The wars were, in any case, drawing to their end; the news of Bari’s surrender came in the day after I refused to take another reinforcement column to the siege. Abramo must have known it was near; obviously, he had no intention of actually strengthening a siege that was practically over. Soldiers cost money, after all, and the Aiello are well known to squeeze every ducat until you can see their finger-marks in the soft gold. No, it was another attempt to kill me and hide the deed in a mountain of corpses, and I was well out of it.

Demetrio Contarini never commanded in the field again; shortly after the surrender of Bari, he led the peace delegation that ended the war. While he was in Amalfi, negotiating the treaty, he contracted the Great Plague and died. It is not clear whether Abramo knew that the plague had broken out in Amalfi.

I hear there was a war of some sort in the East, nomad hordes attacking Russia and the English defending them; but we in peaceable Italy know nothing of these great affairs – we mind our own business and don’t get our trade posts where they’re not wanted. This session, as the previous ones, my main business was to continue the unification of Italy; I now have dominion over the whole Balkan coast of the Adriatic, and am picking apart Sicily city by city. I also finally got around to kicking the Pope out of Rome; and my esteemed overlord has kindly agreed to sell me the north-Italian city-states. So the map of my expansion looks fairly nice:

Central Mediterranean, 1319. Note the conquest of Rome; note also the Iberian colonies (labeled ‘Britannia’, but the loose confederation of kingdoms that acknowledge Britain’s nominal suzerainty is a legal fiction that’s particularly threadbare in the Med; those are lands of the Spanish kings) surrounding the Tyrrhenian sea like a noose and interfering with trade. Admittedly mainly Pisan trade, but the point stands.