Rome: Total War The Dark Ages Mod

[boranchistanger]

OK: Planning meeting on Friday December 3, 2004 at 7pm EST. This meeting will be on AOL Instant Messenger. If you want to help me figure out units and other historical things, please come. Contact me on AIM before or during that time for more information. My AIM is boranchistanger and my email is boranchistanger@yahoo.com

-Boran

[JANOSIK007]

What if AOL is inaccessible to some members.

[boranchistanger]

then you will be unable to attend the meeting and will have to just comment on the mod's forum when the meeting is posted on the forum.

-Boran

[Romaoi]

There are many people roiling the steppes during this period, for instance the Bulgars were very strong and a serious military threat to the East Roman Empire, Under Khan Krum and Tzar Simeon, the Bulgarians forced the defeated Byzantines to shelter behind their land walls in Constantinople. Had they pocessed a fleet or siege technology the might have conquered the Romans before the Fourth Crusade in 1204 or the Turks in 1453!

Here is a rough timeline:

482 AD: the Turkic speaking Bulgars are living near the river named for them (VOLGA). Hence the Volgar-Bulgaria in MTW.
584: Kubrat unifies the Bulgars and and various client peoples on the steppes.
650: The expansion of the Khazars drives the Bulgars westward.
681: Under the leadership of Asparouch (Kubrat's son) the Bulgars cross the Danube into modern Bulgaria, the Romans eventually are forced to accept their existence as an independent kingdom. The Bulgars weld their various Slavic clients into a powerful kingdom headed by a Turkic speaking military aristocracy. Eventually the Turkic speaking Bulgars become gradually assimilated iwith their Slavic speaking subjects.
807: Khan Krum becomes king of the Bulgars and establishes his capital at Pliska. The Magyars settle north of the Danube and become foederati of the Bulgars.
810: Khan Krum destroyes the Avars in what is now Hungary.
811: Plisk is sacked by the Romans and Khan Krum's utterly destroys the Roman army in a mountain pass, killing the Emperor Nicephorus I . The Khan has the emperor's head made into a gold drinking goblet.
813: Khan Krum takes Hadrianopolis (Adrianople) in Thrace.
814: Khan Krum dies on his way to take Constantinople and is succeeded by his less warlike son Omurtag (the Byzantines get a breather)
852: Khan Boris becomes ruler of Bulgaria, and he moves Bulgaria closer into the Byzantine cultural sphere.
863: Khan Boris converts Bulgaria to christianity and takes the name Michael and the title of Tzar (Caesar) from the Emperor Michael of Constantinople.
863: The Byzantines send the brothers Cyril and Methodius from Constantinople to translate the bible and orthodox liturgical texts into Slavonic. They then leave on a mission to convert the slavs in Moravia. The newly Christianized Bulgaria's capital is moved to Preslav.
893: Tzar Boris-Michael decides to enter a monastery and names his son Vladimir as his successor. Vladimir leads a Bulgar counter revolution against Slavic, Greek and Christian elements in Bulgaria. Tzar Boris returns from the monastery, defeats his son, blinds him and returns with him to the monastery, leaving his other son Simeon as Tzar. Simeon was educated in Constantinople for an eccleastical career.
895: The Byzantine emperor bribes the Magyars to attack Bulgaria. After being defeated by the Magyars, Tzar Simeon bribes the Petchnegs to attack the Magyars. The defeated Magyars retreat west where they overwhelm the Moravians in their turn.
896:Tzar Symeon defeats a Byzantine army for the first time, and subsequently extends his rule into most of the Balkans to the walls of Constantinople.
922: Tzar Symeon defeats the Byzantine army for the fourth and last time. The Easter Roman Empire in Europe is reduced to Constantinople and some Maritime city enclaves in Greeece.
927: Tzar Symeon of dies, while preparing another siege of Constantinople.

And it goes on and on. The First Bulgarian Empire is finally conquered by the Byzantine Emperor Basil the Bulgar Killer in the tenth century.

Bulgar Armies of this period consisted of Bulgar Horse archers and Slavic infantrymen.

[JANOSIK007]

pretty good chronology, except for two corrections that need to be made.

Cyril and method were first sent to Moravia and you implied they were sent to Bulgaria. Rastislav asked for someone as a conter to Romanized Frank missionaries.

Magyars moved westward with Bavarians' incentive, who wanted to stop the expansive Moravian Empire, as well as Pecheneg pressure. I am not sure about the nature of relationship between Bulgars and Pechenegs, but I am pretty sure that Byzantines wouldn't call Magyars on their allies, the Moravians. In fact, Moravians were exerting some pressure on Bulgars and managed to snatch some territories from them.

Maybe this is what happened (know the pieces fit at least to me): Byzantines called Magyars to settle in present day Romania and weaken Bulgars. Magyars did that and by 895 they created a major settlement northwest of Olt river that up to recent times was a major concentration of Szekely people (Magyar related). But Pechenegs were pushing westward and with an added incentive from Bavarians, Magyars moved once again so that by 901 they established centers in upper danubian plains. Perhaps.

I have only heard of the Bavarian involvement. Byzantines had too much to lose to call Magyars west

[Jamais Le Dimanche]

No I believe it shows that Cyril and Methodius were engaged in Translating Orthodox liturgical texts before they were sent to Moravia. Bulgarian Orthodox activity ocurred at the same time but separately. The two saintly brothers were sent to Moravia at the behest of the local ruler Prince Rostislav. The two brothers became involved in a dispute with german Catholic missionaries which resulted in Cyril journeying to Rome, where he died. After the Catholic party took over in Moravia, the slavonic vernacular liturgy was suppressed and the Orthodox missionaries were expelled. These disciples of Methodius later found refuge with Tzar Boris-Michael in Bulgaria. This Tzar awarded one of these, St. Clement a Bishopric at Ochrid in what is now Macedonia.

The war between the Romans (Byzantium) and Bulgaria resulted from a trade dispute. The Byzantines bribed the Magyars to attack the Bulgarians and they were initially succesful. The Bulgarian ruler, the resourceful and highly educated Simeon (he was educated in Constantinople and spoke fluent Greek) bribed in turn the Petchnegs, a steppe tribe that had close kinship ties with the Bulgarian,s Turkic ruling classes. Together the Bulgars and Petchnegs inflicted a decisive defeat on the Magyars, driving them westward from what is now Moldavia-Romania into what was then Moravia. (too bad for the Moravians). Simeon then turned southward and defeated the Romans in a sucession of battles, conquering most of the Balkans north of the gulf of Corinth with the exception of Solonika and a few large cities that could be supplied by sea.

This would be a very exciting period to mod, I think. A map with Constantinople at the center. Instead of Mongol Hordes, you could have "Frankish Hordes" appear periodically in the west, and Muslims in the east. Bulgarians, Serbians, Croatians, Moravians, Avars, Cumans, Petchnegs, Khazars and others all tried with varying success to found states bordering Byzantium. A few, (Serbia and Bulgaria) manged to become serious threats to Byzantine existence. On the other half you would have the various Turkic peoples, Sejuks, Osmanlis, Gagauz, and in the Southeast the Arabs. The object could be preserving Byzantium or conquering it until 1460 or something.

[Romaoi]

Jan,
I think that is my poor english skills. What I meant to say was that the two brothers Constantine (later Cyril, upon taking the orders) and Methodius were directed to translate various Orthodox religious texts into Slavonic. The two were from Thessalonika and may have been slavs themselves. I don't want to tread on somebody's nationalist toes here. The could have been Greek too. Either way, both the Moravians asked the Roman Emperor at Constantinople to send them some missionaries, perhaps to counter some Greman Catholic threat. So the two brothers went to Moravia and Methodius became an Archbishop there. Preaching Christianity in a language that the Moravians could understand gave the Orthodox an advantage in this endeavor, which generated a dispute between them and the Latin speaking German Catholic missionaries.

In the event, the Catholic won out in the long run, you obviously know more about Moravian history that I do and the Orthodox were driven out from Moravia. The disciples of Methodis and Cyril were then able to find refuge in Bulgaria, with their leaders (Methodius having died) Naum becoming a Bishop in Preslav and Clement becoming a Bishop in Ochrid.

The proto Bulgars were Turkic speaking steppe horsemen. They formed a confederation on the steppes including many other tribes. They came under attack by the Persian speaking Khazars and migrated westward. Being mobile they just basically packed up and left.

By the nineth century, the Bulgars had wrested territory from the Romans in the Northern Balkans. The Magyars were in what is now eastern Romania and Moldavia, north of the Danube and west of the Dneister river.

When Tzar Simeon used a trade dispute to attack the Romans, the Roman Emperor Leo bribed the Magyars under Arpad, to attack Bulgaria from the north. This Magyar attack was at first successful. However, the Emperor then made a hasty armistice with the Bulgarian leader Simeon, leaving the Magyars to face the wrath of the full Bulgarian Army by themselves. Furthermore, the Simeon (not called The Great for nothing) induced his kinsmen, the Petchenegs to attack the Magyar,s unprotected lands from the east. Caught in a Bulgar-Petcheneg pincer, the Magyars were defeated and the Jen tribe was almost wiped out. Unable to return to their former lands, the Magyars withdrew to the west, where they became the Moravians headache.