800-899 (Abrittus)

The First Baltic War
It took place between 850 and 854. Although only little territorial adjustments immediately resulted from it, its long-term consequences for the development of the Baltic region and Scandinavia were far-reaching.

Firearms reached Scandinavia and the Baltic region in the 800s (Sørstad alliance), 810s (Agder, Viken, Denmark, Geatland, Vineta) and 820s (Svearike-Sjonarike, Courland, Karmøy, Trøndelag). Throughout the first half of the 9th century, the kings of the Svear in Uppsala had to witness a consolidation of Danish-Geatic-Sørstad hegemony  Understandings between the Sørstad allies and the Frisian Hanse, forged with Celtic help, meant that almost no port towns were outside the reach of this duopoly. Uppsala felt itself with its back against the wall.

Under these circumstances, king Gustav I. forged an alliance with Hening, King of Saxony. He set Denmark-Geatland an ultimatum: Should they not have lowered their customs claims for the Kattegat passage by 30%, opened the port of Älvsborg for Swedish ships and guaranteed a safe, pirate-free passage through the Kattegat to Celtic Jutland with a member of the royal family as hostage in Uppsala by the spring aequinox in 850, then Sweden would enforce its free Kattegat passage.

The Danes and Geats had no intention of complying with the ultimatum. Thus, in the morning of April 22nd, 850, Swedish troops marched into Geatland, while simultaneously, Saxon troops landed on Western Danish islands. Denmark-Geatland was evidently over strained with fighting on two fronts: While they were able to stop the Saxon advance in Fyn in May, they could not push the Saxon army back off Ærø and Langeland. After Swedish divisions defeated the Geats in the battle of Skara and marched towards the Kattegat coast in June, the Danish-Geatic king Harald had to ask Norwegian allies for help. On June 6th, the kingdom of Agder joined the war on Harald's side. Moving 16,000 soldiers to Geatland, Agder`s assistance came just in time to confront the Swedes in late June, who had lain siege on Älvsborg, which could not have withstood the cannons and the food shortage very much longer. The fights for Älvsborg continued intensely for 13 days, until the Swedish troops withdrew and dug themselves in in the hinterland on July 10th.

Both Harald and his opponents, Gustav and Hening, had tried to win the support of the Celtic Empire, or at least the Frisian Hanse, whose ships were the only ones in the Baltic endowed with Greek fire, but Celts and Frisians remained neutral, the latter selling weapons to both sides which the former had manufactured.

In late July 850, the Saxons launched a new offensive in Fyn. On August 8th, Gudme fell into the hands of the Saxons and was plundered and burned. Harald knew he needed more forces than he had to stop the Saxons in Denmark and push back the Swedes in Geatland. He sent military attachés to Vineta, which had always been neutral in any Baltic Sea battle so far and never deployed troops outside the Slavic-speaking lands of its network of trading towns.

But the town councillors of Vineta´s vece knew that the moment had come for their city to assume a more direct role in the greater Baltic picture. While two divisions of Harald`s army, together with soldiers from Agder, launched an unsuccessful attack on Swedish positions in September, Vineta gathered a small part of its mercenary force and prepared a strategy for intervention. On October 1st, 850, Vineta´s professional soldiers marched into the Obodrite Kingdom, which was Saxony`s vassal, who had also deployed troops in this war. On the same day, Harald`s navy, together with Sørstad mercenaries, defeated the Saxon navy, which had tried to move troops from Langeland to Lolland. Throughout October, the Danes pushed the Saxons off Langeland now, while on the continent, Vineta's soldiers laid siege on Sverin. Sverin falls to Vineta in November and is plundered. The king and his court escaped to Liubice. In December, Vineta consolidates its control over Polabia, while a Saxon counteroffensive secures Langeland. New Saxon attempts to land on Denmark`s main island, Sjælland, fail, though. In Sweden, short skirmishes bring no territorial gains for either side.

851 begins with a new Vinetan offensive into Wagria and the siege of Liubice in February. The town falls into Vineta´s hands in March. Instead of plundering the port town, Vineta decides to re-establish its independent urban structures and make it into an ally. The royal Obodritic family is killed, except for Radomir, the dead king`s extremely unpopular cousin, who flees to Hamburg. Vinetan negotiators catalyse the establishment of a Liubician vece and seal several contracts. New mercenaries from among Liubice`s middle classes are being trained for an effective defense of the town and perhaps later participation in Vineta`s campaign, as the main body of Vineta´s deployment withdraws.

In February 851, the king of Viken joins his neighbours` side against his other neighbour, Sweden. With fresh troops, a new offensive pushes back Swedish positions for more than 50 km. The battles cause great numbers of casualties.

In the meantime, Radomir meets the Saxon king Hening and reminds him of his duties in protecting his vassal. Hening agrees, especially since the loss of the Obodrite ally impedes Saxon access to the Baltic Sea even further. Saxony withdraws almost half of its troops from the Danish archipelago and prepares an offensive on its new Eastern front. As a consequence, Langeland and Ærø fall back into Danish hands and Danish troops manage to land in Fyn, too, attacking the remaining Saxon forces from many sides.

In May 851, Saxony launches its attack on Vineta`s positions close to the Elbe-Delf-Stignica border. Vineta is prepared and manages to hold the lines for a whole week until the Saxons withdraw and regroup. Another offensive in August brings the breakthrough, though. Vineta's troops withdraw into strategically most relevant and best fortified positions, while Saxon troops clear (and plunder - strategically unclever but necessary since the ethelinga leadership reaches the limits of their financial reserves for this war and a war tax has not yet passed the Thing) the rural areas of Polabia and Wagria. In September and October, Sverin is besieged and finally abandoned by Vineta´s small defensive troops. The Saxons install Radomir is King of the Obodrites in Sverin. Liubice, which has not yet come under Saxon control, does not accept Radomir`s suzerainty and rallies his opponents.

Almost all sides being financially and militarily exhausted, the war takes a break during the winter of 851/2. Only Liubice, parts of Geatland a couple of Danish isles are currently not in the hands of those who had controlled them in 869. The war could have stopped here - but the Swedish leadership had not yet given up on their claim to free access across the Kattegat, the extremely unpopular Radomir was bent on regaining Liubice - and, most importantly, the Celts did not yet it consider a quick end to this war as crucial for their interests.

While there were no major hostilities in Scandinavia in 852, the war raged on on the continent. In March 852, Saxons and Radomir`s knights tried to reconquer Liubice once more, and they had to give up after six weeks once again. Saxony decided to strike at the heartland of Liubice`s supporters in Vineta and marched into Liuticia with a large army, whose deployment strained the Saxon`s means severely. Vineta, on the other hand, still had ample funds left, but no sufficiently great army at its disposal. New divisions were built under pressure, and their cooperation with the self-confident professional mercenary units did not always go well. Nevertheless, Vineta`s colourful alliance of Slavic defenders was able to defeat the advancing Saxons in a great battle at Spandow (OTL Berlin) in August 862, which went down into the history of the Northern Slavs as the great heroic defense of their homeland.

But many towns, which belonged to Vineta´s alliance, and their surrounding lands in the West were still controlled by Saxons and had to suffer from plunderings and a cruel treatment of the civilian population. Vineta asked Danish King Harald to return the favour and attack the Saxons to provide relief.

Harald waited so that the yeomen in his army could complete their harvests (which the Liuticians suffering under Saxon rule couldn`t, but neither could many Saxons), and gathered his troops in late October. They landed on Fehmarn in November 852 and dug in. So far, Saxon King Hening did not consider it necessary to move his troops from Venedia to the Baltic coast, especially since Vineta still had not given up Liubice. The Danes fortified Fehmarn, and in December, they moved on into Albingia, attacking Saxony`s heartland.

Now, Hening was compelled to withdraw his troops from Venedia. But they came too late. The Danes crushed the Saxon defense lines in a series of successful battles near Pinneberg, and on Winter Solstice in 852 (two days before the few Christians celebrated Christmas), the Saxon capital of Hammaburg was attacked by Danish longboats sailing up the Elbe and by Danish troops, too. After five weeks, the fierce Saxon resistance was broken. The Danes hoisted their flag over the palace of the Saxon king, who had fled with his entire court and government to Bremen.

The Saxons withdrew troops from anywhere else (Denmark as well as Venedia) in order to restore control over Hamburg. It took the Saxon army five weeks to eliminate all Danish presence in and around Hamburg, and then another two months to push them off Albingia. During this time, the Danes restored control over all Danish isles and fortified them, while Vineta sorted its Liutician territories out. After a last skirmish in Anglia in June 853, Danes, Saxons and Venedians negotiated a separate ceasefire.

///to be continued///

Economy & Technology

 * Across the Mediterranean, wood shortages create crises and rising prices, leading first to the shutting down of many public baths and a widespread change in diet towards vegetables and fruit (popularised also by Jainist peregrini), which do not require cooking, then to increased efforts in finding new coal deposits and new ways of extracting coal from deeper strata.
 * Steel production improves and increases considerably in the Celtic and Roman Empires, in Saba, Aksum, Persia, Silla, India and Sri Vijaya. It also begins in Dvaravati.
 * Tang emperors impose the introduction of a textile industry after the Roman model based on water dams, mills with turbines and carding, spinning and weaving machines powered by them, against resistance from silk craftsmen.
 * China does not face wood shortages like in Europe because it has established a wood trade with the Uighur Turks, who extend their empire Northwards into the taiga to access ever new wood resources.
 * Persian engineers discover and use electromagnetism.
 * Two centuries later than in Rome, the new social class of "fortunati" has developed in the Celtic Empire, too. It controls the largest manufactures in the empire (mostly steel-producing) and most of the empire`s foreign trade. Here, though, many tycoons are not of equestrian descent, but "new money". This contributes to an economic ideology of the "self-made Celtic man": everyone can get rich if they try hard enough! Consequently, fortunati are not viewed as critically as in Rome, and their influence on the policies of the Celtic Senate are even stronger than in Rome. New legal forms (corporations) are created to make the huge economic dominia manageable, provide them with many economic and fiscal advantages which lots of citizens don´t understand anymore, and allow them to employ private armies, which they need to operate trade through Sogdia.
 * Two decades after the Celtic law reform, the Roman Senate allows corporations to hold private armies, too, so that they can compete with the Celts and Persians in trade with China through Sogdia, thus reducing the dependence on Ostrogothic sea merchant cartels dominating the maritime trade with China.
 * Roman, Persian, Aksumite, Indian and Chinese cities begin to grow beyond control. The respective governments try to regulate this process with different measures, from restrictive residential policies to reforms aiming at making rural life more bearable, but none of them really succeed.
 * The invention of steel-enforced concrete facilitates the building of larger dams, taller buildings and deeper mine shafts.

Military
Firearms are continually improved, with most innovations made in Roman A.M.s  Portable ones become lighter, faster and more precise, while cannons become larger, more powerful and better to maneuver.

They revolutionise warfare. Instead of skilled warriors, economic power (to either buy weapons or produce them themselves), skilled weapons engineers and labour in weapon manufactures as well as great numbers of soldiers now decide wars. Fortifications must be continually thickened and enhanced.

Philosophy / science

 * In a Frankish oil shale deposit some miles East of the Rhine, great numbers of diverse fossils are found by workers. A Celtic businessman hears of the discoveries and stretches them into tall tales, which are divulged by cheaper, popular Celtic newspapers. Albertus Drusus, a biologist from the University of Argentoratum, becomes curious and travels to the oil shale deposit. After years of excavations, preparations and studies, he develops a theory positing an unimaginably old age of planet Earth, during whose long history entirely different species must have lived.

Religion
Göktürk rule brings Tengrist Buddhism to the Mongolians, where it spreads quickly and takes deep roots.

Nations of Europe

 * Roman Empire: Eight years of schooling become compulsory. Imperial and provincial aedils define binding curricula, comprising reading and writing, rhetorics, mathematics, natural sciences, Roman history, Roman constitution, Latin resp. Greek as a foreign language, preparative military training and physical education. Both Simonist anarchists and old patrician families oppose the new "mass schools", but lictores and drastic fines against uncooperative parents coerce many into compliance.
 * The New Frankish Federation (republican) re-unites all of Franconia. Economically, it mostly provides the Celtic Empire with cheap coal and ore.
 * Moravians intensify their economic activity in the lands of their Burgundian neighbours. The government repeatedly protects these enterprises with small detachments, whose firearms leave rioting Burgundians helpless. After King Aric of Burgundy sends his royal army against Moravian troops, Moravia decides to step in vigorously. Moravians march on Wilthauaborg and replace King Aric with his more pro-Moravian cousin Gunthar V. Thus, Burgundy has factually become a Moravian vassal state.
 * Glaciana is settled by Celts, Frisians and Norwegians. The Celtic Church founds several monasteries on the island. Glacianian merchants and missionaries establish permanent contacts with the Inuit, Beothuk and Miqmaq of Northern Atlantis. Toward the end of the 9th century, Celtic monasteries and trading ports are built on Polaris and Nova Hibernia.
 * The destruction of Perm and the interruption of the Ugro-Finn`s trade relations with the Ostrogoths, Romans and Caucasians caused by the Chasars led to a division of the Ugro-Finnic peoples of the taiga into a Western group of Komi, Ersja and Karelians around the new town of Sara (populated by Ersja) and an Eastern group led by Magyars (with a few Chasars) and comprising the Chanti and Mansi, too, around the town of Kismarton. Sara orients itself towards Peresechen, through whom they sell wood to the Romans, while Kismarton intensifies its ties with Persia, Choresm, Bactria and Sogdia.
 * New Bogatygavan's Slavic reconquest of the Pontic Steppe marked the beginning of an enforced modernisation and nation-building. The reconquesters brought with them Roman education, craft skills and ideas of how to run a republic, and implemented them step by geographical step in the country they gained control over thanks to Roman firearms. By the end of the century, the Slavonic Republic controls almost all of OTL Ukraine and south-eastern parts of OTL Poland. Its centre is still in the South, at the Black Sea Coast. Its Roman-style schools teach not only the Greek alphabet for the Slavic language, but also different Jewish and Christian creeds. Traditional Slavic cult and mythology recede and survive mostly in the countryside, which also undergoes agricultural modernisation to increase output.
 * The Chasars, being pushed further and further to the East by the Slavonic Republic, begin to haunt the Black and Caspic Sea as pirates, intercepting Euro-Chinese trade by Ostrogoths and others and selling whatever they couldn't directly use to the Slavs or Caucasians. After a decade of piracy, the Roman army occupies the entire Black Sea coast and cracks down on the pirates with gunboats. Two years later, the Persian republic does the same in the Caspic Sea.
 * Sixteen years later, when the Chasars had gotten their hands on firearms, too, they rebelled against Slavic expansion and Roman and Persian military presence. In a concerted effort (which would have been unimaginable in the times of permanent Roman-Sassanid conflicts some centuries ago), the Roman and Persian armies, together with Rome´s close Slavonic and Caucasian allies, march into the Chasar hinterland, where even the fiercest Chasar resistance could not withstand the superior firepower of arms that the Academiae Martianae and their Persian equivalents had recently designed and state manufactures had produced en masse. All of Chasarstan was split along pre-discussed lines. The treatment of the Chasar population in the conquered territories foreshadowed what would become widespread racist practice in the later age of imperial expansion: In the Slavonic Republic, Chasars were forced to assimilate and settle down, without being given land, i.e. they ended up as cheap agricultural  workforce. Resistance to assimilation was repeatedly met with brutal oppression. In the Roman territory, which did not even become a normal province for a century, which also means that its inhabitants were not automatically Roman citizens, arbitrary rules governed. Citizenship was granted to some inhabitants (mostly of Caucasian origin or other ethnicity less suspicious to Rome), and only this entitled them to own land and exclude others from using it. Here, too, Chasars became an impoverished underclass, but no cultural assimilation was attempted. The territory controlled by the Persians was directly annexed by the Persian Republic, and here, Chasars fared less badly. Still influential Mazdakist parties and schools of political thought tend to idealise the non-proprietary nomadic societies; on their behest, ample reservations are created in which the Chasars can continue their culture and nomadic lifestyle (until, in later centuries, oil would be discovered there).
 * Some Chasar clans try to escape poverty and marginalisation under Slavonic or Roman rule and migrate into the Caucasian kingdoms, where they blend in with the population. This is the reason for the numerous Turkish influences in the Nachic, Lesgic, Lasikian and Swanian languages.

Nations of Asia

 * While the Karluks associate themselves closely with the Sogdians and build Buddhist monasteries to demonstrate their civilised nature, the Uyghurs decide to scripturalise and codify Tengrism instead and attempt to increase their independence through exerting their dominance over the Khitan. When the Kyrghyz attack the Uyghur capital of Karabalghasum in 840, the Uyghurs must rely on Tang nevertheless. With Chinese military assistance (with lots of firearms), Karabalghasum is defended and the Uyghur Khaganate saved (in contrast to OTL). Nevertheless, the Uyghurs are factually reduced to a Tang vassal.
 * After the Uyghurs become Chinese vassals, the Khitan try to pursue a more independent foreign policy, assisting the Tungusian rebels in Balhae in 863, for example. After Tang restores its order in Balhae in 871, it coerces the Khitan to accept Chinese suzerainty in 873/4, too.
 * Balhae: The oppressed Tungusian / Mohe population rebels against the rule of the Korean elite and installs a Mohe Emperor in 863. Tang refuses to acknowledge him and intervenes in favour of the old Korean elites in 871.
 * Nihon: Concentration of land ownership and struggles between aristocratic families increase economic tensions in the Nihonian society, compelling many Japanese to haunt the sea as pirates, attacking Chinese and Sillan ships. Since the Yamato kingdom is not on friendly terms with Tang China and Silla since it has lost its presence on the Korean Peninsula to them, it takes no measures to stop the piracy, although Tang and Silla ambassadors repeatedly request this.
 * China / Nihon: In the end, the Chinese navy occupies and fortifies the Ryukyu / Liuqiu Islands to improve its logistic basis for the anti-piracy campaign, then launches gunboats against the pirates, attacking them on the Nihonian mainland, too. The Yamato kingdom severely protests (but knows it is too weak to put up effective resistance.), then decides to modernise and build up its armed forces - a plan which does not quite succeed due to persisting rivalries between influential family clans.

Nations of Africa

 * The Horon build more port towns / colonies where the absence of mangroves allows this. Formal education after the Roman model is established in the towns. Professional apprenticeships are in the hands of guilds. For very profitable businesses even in the hands of secret societies, who also develop their own philosophies and semi-religious rituals.
 * With Saban arms and instructions (meant to contain Aksum`s Massai colonists), Kitara expands to the North, West and South and introduces its new agricultural techniques in the entire tropical central Africa.
 * After expansion and internal conflicts in Kitara, defeated tribes led by some former Kitara leaders migrate Westward and settle along the Kongo river, from where they organise their trade with the Horon. Towards the end of the century, the Kingdom of Kongo develops from these settlements.
 * Two attempts by the Kirinyaga Alliance to reconquer their ancestral lands fail. The Christian Church of Saba establishes missions and schools among the Kirinyaga. The nascent social and political elites of Kirinyaga, who are based on wealth generated by owning modernly farmed land and controlling the trade of its produce, who transcend tribal boundaries and who absorb the culture of the developing Eurasian empires through Saban mediation, are increasingly divided into a Christianising, pro-Saba faction, which remains fixed on regaining their ancestral lands from Aksum, and a pro-inner-Africa faction, which stresses the necessity of finding a genuine way into modernity and seeks alliances with central African polities (causing, among other things, disputes and divisions within Kitara).
 * In central Southern Africa and along the Zambezi river, the Munhumutapa empire with its capital of Zimbabwe establishes itself and controls the inland trade with Saban, Aksumite and Persian networks.
 * The elites of Yoruba write in Greek letters, too, now, and scripturalises its state religion, which has begun to incorporate Judaist syncretisms. In the wake of doctrinal disputes and fears of revolution and social unrest, the Yoruba leadership expels all Simonists, who had formed small communities along the Niger, from their empire. The Nigerian Simonists re-settle among the Bantu in OTL South Cameroon.

Nations of Atlantis
Salvador79 (talk) 13:09, April 21, 2014 (UTC)
 * Among the Inuit, Beothuk and Miqmaq, diseases, which Celtic explorers, tradesmen and monks carried with them and which were harmless for them, ravage and kill more than half of the indigenous population in the coastal regions. Pharmaceutically educated Celtic monks experiment with all sorts of roots and chemical substances and treatments, but cannot find any effective cures. The Beothuk believe that the diseases result from a disturbance of the natural balance brought about by the advent of the Celts, and rise in a rebellion against the settlers on Nova Hibernia. Weakened in number and lacking firearms, their rebellion fails. Only a small group is able to retreat and, using their knowledge of the grounds, to hide away from a punitive campaign, saving the Beothuk nation from complete extinction.
 * Decades of Chasar attacks and piracy drove many Ostrogoths into emigration. Whilst most of them moved to Greek-speaking eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, some settled on the islands in the Atlantic ocean, of which only those closer to Europe and Africa were uninhabited. Those closer to the Atlantic (OTL: Northern American) mainland were mostly inhabited by Taino and other Aruak tribes. Here, Ostrogoths and Taino formed various complex social symbioses. On some islands, Ostrogoths rented land from the Taino, intensified and modernised agriculture and enabled the Taino to live idly off the rent. On others, Ostrogoths bought gold mines and began exporting the gold back to Europe.
 * A first wave of epidemics hit the Taino late in the century. The Ostrogoths decide to isolate the stricken islands and villages and manage to contain the epidemics. Nevertheless, about a quarter of the Taino dies.
 * From the Taino islands, Ostrogoths (and partly assimilated Taino) sailed further to the West in search of the "real" Atlantis from European mythology (concluding from the wealth of gold among the Taino and their relatively primitive society on the other hand - the famous golden civilization had to be near!). In the stormy Caribbean, many ships sunk. Those who reached new shores found belligerent Carib tribes in OTL Venezuela and equally belligerent Maya city states, whose societies were more complex and open for new trading opportunities. Contacts were few and far between in the 9th century, though.

Abrittus