Pontus.The story of a kingdom !
Starting Conditions:
Campaign difficulty: Medium
Battle difficuly: Hard
Version/Mod: RTW 1.5 whith TE 5.1 (a very beautifull and stable Mod, extremely infrequent CTD`s...)
Please excuse my poor english, i am not a native speaker of this language.
The King of Pontus, Mithridates, was sleeping in his villa from Sinope.. when... he suddenly woke up, like from a nigthmare.His loving wife, Laodice , quikly embraced him... she knew he sometimes used to have nightmares, and this was the best way to make him calm down...
"My dear husband and king... what dream has troubled you this night ?"
Mithridates looked at her whith much saddness .In his eyes, she saw many tears... the tears of a middle aged man.... a man who had seen blood, war, but also tasted all the richness of an easterners life...
"My wife and queen, i had a terrible nightmare... i saw the country torn apart in a civil war.... i have seen death... terrible death among our people... i have seen our nation suffering under a foreign yoke..."
Laodice embraced him, and kissed him, in hopping that her love will calm him down... She was a women of noble greek origin, and she was well educated in the knowlodge of philosophy and ancient wisdom.
"My king... when people have no outside enemyes, they search for enemyes whithin.... if our country would have foreign enemyes, there would be no internall unrest as all the nation would unite to fight ...."
The next day, king Mithridates still having in mind the words of Laodice, sent a couple of envoys to the towns of Colchis and Satala, in the hope of opening a new trade route trough those lands. Riders went from Sinope and from Amasia, travveling all across the rocky mountains and deep woods, further away towards the barren plains of Anatolia and the misterious shores of the legendary Colchis.
Mithridates ordered also that new roads should be built in Amasia and Sinope... new markets should be opened... for it was the time to bring more money into the treasury.
Howewer, in the next week, the emisaryes came back from Colchis and Satala whith not so good news...
"Great king Mithridates, king of Pontus and king of the kings, whe bring to you bad news and bad omens... The men of Colchis and the people of Satala decided not to open the trade routes to our caravans, and even more, the threathend to kill all our traders !'
Mithridates rose up in anger...
"So they want war... war is what they will have !"
The man of Kotais where brave men, nevertheles... they defended theyr city in the last years fighting and defeating a large Armenian Army... They where skilled marksmen, and at the defense of theyr stone walls, they thought themselves to be invincible. The ones of Satala, lived in poverty. Theyr only booty was taken from the unfortunate Seleucid armyes and caravans who often got lost in the high mountains of Capadoccia... then the men of Satala ambushed them in the passes , killed them and took as boothy what they could...
The nephew of Mithridates was already sitting on the border whith Colchis when he received the news that war against this rebels have broken out. Quikly he gathered all the men and started marching acrros the border.The local villages sent a few hundred Sparabara to join him... mainly for the money...
From Amasia, another nephew of Mithridates gathered more than 2/3 s of the cityes garrison, and marched towards Satala.A skilfull spy went already a few days ago in reconaiscence and managed to infiltrate Satala.
In the middle of winter, Satala was sorounded by the pontic troops.... it was a great blizzard.... lot of snow, and the man where very tired. The prospect of waiting another season to attack, was not acceptable... especially when the spy sent a message that he can guarantee that for certain, the citygates of Satala will be open...
SO, the siege started. Pontic archers marched towards the gate, and covered the advance of the Sparabara militias trough an inferno of arrows... despite the heavy blizzard, many of those arrows found theyr targets.The Pandophatoi Phalangitai then entered the city in force , storming the enemy militiamen guarding the gate. The comander of Satala, seeing the fact that the battle was lost, commited suicide by charging against the front of the phalanx whith his heavy cavalrymen... Satala was taken... the population was spared, but the altar to the false god Armazd has been destroyed.
In contrast, the siege of Kotais was a much more bloody bussines. The terrain where bad, there where no phalanxes, only Sparabaras... Armenian reconoiscence forces patrolled across the border, ready to storm the mountain passes at any moment...
Maybe it is not good to tell the story about the siege of Kotais... it was a very bloody bussines... a shame to the Pontus... King Mithridates was enraged when he learned that more then 2/3 of the attacking army was lost, while having a huge superiority in numbers...but anyway, Kotais was taken....
The next years, rumours came that Armenia started growing even stronger... the Armenians under King Aramu launched several failed attacks at the gruzin fortress of Mtskheta... then, turned against the fortress of Cabalaca, not farr away from the shores of the salty Caspian Sea...
Mithridates was still troubled... a war against the armenians would be more likely a disaster... theyr quick horse archers would certainly decimate the slow Sparabaras... there was no prospect of recruiting archers, or pontic cavalry in large numbers... Pontus was (stil) a poor kingdom...
But the Bythinians... yes, they where rich.. and even more, they where close to the rich greeks... to Pergamum... they had mines... many resources...
But a march towards Nicomedia would be fatale.... galatian rebels in huge numbers roamed across the central Anatolia... even if a pontic army was able to get pass trough them, it would be in such low numbers that a siege against a well defended town such as Nicomedia would end in a disaster...
Under the command of a rather anonymous captain, the pontic task force joined the fleet in the SInope harbour, and started sailing across the deep, blue waters of the Pontic Sea.... ...
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