Part Five
Disunion
The Successor Wars: Map of Central and Eastern Europe, circa 1169 ER
The Imperial Union of the North, more than anything else, has always been characterized by stability.
To the east, the Russian Tsardom constantly breaks down under threat from Imperials and Pechengs, only to piece itself back together a decade or two later. To the south, the League and Italy barely hold on in the face of more prominent powers, constantly guarded both from powerful states like France and Byzantium and the neverending, often nonsensical intrigue Mediterranean courts are so well-known for. And even the supposedly powerful states of England and France constantly swap dynastic rulers, holding uneasy alliances of culturally disparate nations, each striving to rule the greater state. But the Union, with a single dynastic line for three hundred years and without a single major internal war since its founding, has always been the metaphorical bedrock of Western and Central Europe.
With the death of Emperor Erik, that comforting illusion is shattered.
Roughly a month is given to grieving as the freemen of the Union come to terms with the complex political situation, but the first serious skirmishes between the self-proclaimed Fylkir Anud (Whose name, perhaps ironically, means
protected by the sword) and those forces loyal to the boy Erik had indicated as his successor, Sigurd II. Sigurd is barely eight years old in 1165 ER, and though undoubtedly eloquent for his age, decidedly unable to defend himself against Anund's claims that Erik had, in reality, appointed Anund as his successor moments before dying.
The truth of Anund's claims matter little, in the grand scheme of things, because the Union as a whole did not believe him.
The 'Black Fylkir', Anund.
Anund's support stems mostly from the outlaying villages and cities of the North Way. The self-proclaimed Fylkir gathers roughly three to four thousand peasants to fight from him, convincing townships primarily in Agder and Telemark of his legitimacy as the successor of Erik's rule. Yet Oslo, with its enormously high population (100,000~ in 1200 after multiple subsequent population booms, despite the plague killing tens of thousands) remains entirely out of his grasp due to the fervent opposition of the av Sverdklydige Huskarlr, who around this time became known commonly as
Alsverk - the blackshirts, so named for their distinctive armor being painted black with red trims in the style of the av Sverdklydige house colors. An often found perception among historians of the Union is that the blackshirts won the war for Sigurd. Though the successor wars were a complex and trying time in Imperial history, and the history of the wars are greatly nuanced, it's enormously difficult to understate the importance that roughly one thousand men clad in intimidating black-and-red outfits and tattooed with the howling white wolfshead of the av Sverdklydige had in determining the outcome of the Successor Wars.
Kurfryste Eigil - a lower noble made a húskarlr in parallel sometime around 1155 ER, Eigil became recognized as "Fyrhúskarl", or the First housecarl, by Sigurd II in 1171 ER. By 1200, the office had become known as Fyrgavörðr, or the First Guard, with authority over the rather expansive húskarlr.
The Alsverk were practically monolithic in their adherence to Sigurd, led by a minor but significant noble by the name of Eigil who had been granted an additional title in the huskarlr by the Emperor Erik. Eigil, for the most part, acted as a sort of mentor and guardian to Sigurd, and helped organize the administration of Jafnadgr when Sigurd was too young to seriously govern. Despite his powerful role with the effective command of the most organized and well-armed military force in the Union, Eigil never seemed to exhibit any leanings towards Anund or Harald, nor did he display any ambitions of his own. Whether this is due to moralistic feeling or the understanding that the fanatically loyal blackshirts would turn on him in an instant if he broke the oath of loyalty to the av Sverdklydige all of the Alsverk were required to swear is lost to time, and the realm of pure speculation.
Regardless, the skirmishes around Telemark rapidly increased in intensity. As forces loyal to Anund and Sigurd clashed, control of Oslo enabled Eigil and his imposing blackshirts to launch a fairly comprehensive recruitment campaign within and around the city, levying an estimated three to four thousand - about the same as Anund had been able to recruit in the southwestern provinces. Unfortunately for Anund, this number was on top of the thousand blackshirts already headquartered in Jafnadgr, who, as the personal bodyguards of the Imperial family and sole policing force of Oslo, had access to the largest and most modern armory and stables in the North. Eigil wasted no time pressing the advantage on Anund, and organized a large cohort to bear down on Telemark in August of 1165.
Anund never stood a chance. Even if it had just been the Blackshirts alone, the av Sverdklydige had meticulously picked their Huskarls from the most prolific soldiers of a state that spanned practically all of central and northern Europe, often men who had seen a decade or more of combat in the Leidangr, with ambitious and intensely cunning officers in the vein of Eigil himself. There's good reason to believe Eigil could have decimated Anund's four thousand freemen with his thousand blackshirts, fed by a wealth of experience, vastly superior equipment, and well-trained cavalry. With enough levy support to provide a numerical advantage over Anund, Eigil's forces stormed through the southwest with astounding ease.
That is not to say that Anund made it an easy fight, by any means.
Though the Alsverk and the levied men of Oslo knew the southwestern provinces well, the terrain of the North Way is notoriously good for guerilla fighters. Breached constantly by formidable rivers and impassable fjords, regions like Telemark and Vestfold frequently yield to sloping hills and mountains, and even the gentle plains can be coated with oppressive fog at a moment's notice. When one knows where to hide and how to move, finding someone across the provinces becomes a task akin to finding a needle in a haystack, which was just the frustrating experience that Eigil and his blackshirts were faced with in 1165. After a resounding victory as Anund's army tried to engage them at Skiringsal, his soldiers scattered to the winds - but by no means ceased to be a constant nuisance.
The campaign of rooting Anund and his armies out of the southwest provinces, taking it from the first major battle at Skiringsal to Anund's final capture, lasted well over a year and a half. This is particularly impressive given that the conflict's breadth spanned from the outskirts of Oslo to Oddernes, an area of less than 200 kilometers total. But Anund's inexperienced command and meager army left him without the slightest chance of actually beating Eigil's blackshirts, and over the course of 1165 and 1166 popular support in the southwestern provinces shifted quite dramatically over to Sigurd's side through grandstanding by the blackshirts and Anund's string of military defeats.
By September of 1066 ER, Anund was captured in the mountains of Vestfold with the shriveled remains of his loyal supporters.
Shortly after Anund's arrest, a formal document forfeitting all claims to the Fylkirate and acknowledging Sigurd as the rightful Fylkir of the north, appointed Emperor in just bearing and sound mind by the Fylkir Erik. Anund is held in the dungeons of Jafnadgr, and eventually banished to the new world - but he is, by far, the lesser problem facing Sigurd. With Anund out of the way, the attention of Sigurd, as directed by his loyal older brother Aleksandr and Eigil with his blackshirts, turns to the true power currently holding court in the shattering Union - Harald Knytling, King of the Danes.
Anund's claim had had little legitimacy and rested on unknowable hearsay. Harald, though he consents the title of Fylkir as a heraldic 'spiritual advisor' to Sigurd, presents a far more compelling case. At the time of Erik's death, Sigurd had not been officially brought before the Grand Assembly for a vote, as is required by law to approve appointments by the Emperor. If a monarch should die without presenting a candidate for appointment, as Erik had, to give the crown to their chosen successor, without vetting them through the Assembly, negates the whole point of having the Assembly affirm them. Sigurd, despite his clear young intelligence, was far too young at the time of Erik's death to actually assume responsibilities of governance, and to pass the title to him at Erik's death, so Harald argues, would in effect make the Union no better than any other petty heraldic monarchy like England or France.
The genuine legitimacy of Harald's argument forces Sigurd's faction to engage him politically. While Harald's practical argument wins him less public support than Sigurd, who still holds the title of Fylkir and therefore, by law, divine mandate over the Imperium, many of the nobles that choose to remain in the Union support him, either because he offers them greater autonomy or because they agree with his argument for a separation of the Fylkirate and Empire. The extensive political infastructure behind Harald places him squarely in control of the
Leidangr, the official standing armies of the Union, of a significantly higher caliber than the average levied freeman. Though they pale against the force of the elite blackshirts in Sigurd's faction, the
Leidangr is roughly twenty thousand strong, and Sigurd is forced to turn to levying large amounts of serfs and freemen to serve in his army under rushed training conditions. While his popular support ensures a significant amount sign up to support the av Sverdklydige they have always known as divinely-inspired monarchs, the end result is a military stalemate, and neither side is willing to immediately engage in armed struggle.
The state of political quagmire drags on and on. Neither side is willing to give ground even when invited back into Oslo and the Grand Assembly for debates, and the stalemate ties up the entire military infastructure of the Union - a status that allows the independence-minded Jarl of Bohemia and Storhertug of Finland to quietly secede from the Union, while the quasi-Polish counties of Danzig and Olsylzn are absorbed into the wide Polish state. Prussia and Lithuania, though they remain in the Union, become isolated and minimally defended, only prevented from being absorbed into the Finnish or Russian states by the begrudging agreement in 1168 ER between Sigurd and Harald's political factions to unilaterally defend the Imperium's borders if attacked. Even French provinces in Alsace-Lorraine are re-absorbed into the French Empire, though a written rejection from the Sjef of Lothriginia causes the French king to back off in fear of a unified Imperial reaction.
Portrait of Aleksandr and Sigurd II in 1069 ER. Aleksandr had played a marginal role in outing his older brother from the southwestern provinces with Eigil and the Blackshirts, but would not prove his military mettle in earnest until the Successor Wars began. Intense pressure remained on Sigurd to demonstrate the ability that Erik had believed he had in the pitched political struggle leading up to the wars.
Sigurd II and his older brother Aleksandr are raised in this trying environment. Sigurd appears formally before the assembly for the first time at the age of twelve, by far the youngest to ever appear in a formal session (Although Elisa held an assembly at the age of fifteen). The appearance of Sigurd himself instead of a loyalist representative does a great deal to sway political opinion in the assembly; at the age of twelve, Sigurd speaks maturely and eloquently, pleading with the Assembly for a unified Imperium not in the naive style of childish impotence, but in the well-bred fashion of a politican. His clear prodigal intelligence is immediately apparent, and were it not for the squeaky, high-pitched voice asking for a reunification between the two currently-held offices, the script might have been mistaken as being written by a thirty-something Jarl.
Despite that, Sigurd's speeches are never particularly charismatic. Nor does he prove to be enough of a master of the political arena to effectively oust Harald over the six-year period of political stalemate during his youth.
What Sigurd does manage to do with his increasingly apt political navigation is popularize his rhetoric.
The common people of the Union generally stood behind Sigurd; the view in most of the loyal provinces of Harald is that of a powergrubber, challenging the legitimate authority of the av Sverdklydige purely for personal political gain. Despite this, he remains in control of the majority of the Leidangr, and a considerable force of levies from minor dukes and Jarls across the Union. By 1172, it had become clear that the political deadlock was not going to break, and Sigurd was not going to be able to dislodge the standing Emperor's deathgrip of the armies of the Union.
In November of that year, the idealistic and high-hearted Sigurd yields to the demands of Eigil and his brother, and an army marches south from Jafnadgr once more.
Primary regions of conflict in the Successor Wars. Darker blue areas were generally loyal to Sigurd, lighter blue to Harald.
While this stage of the war is technically known as the Fylkirate-Imperial War, it came to be known as the term for the wider conflict, including Anund's rebellion and the six-year political stalemate: The Successor Wars. The two years of conflict involved in the clash between Sigurd and Harald's political factions involved more than 100,000 Union men on both sides, and cost over 40,000 Union lives in total - nearly half the number that participate in the war as a whole, a stunningly high casualty rate that left regions of the Imperium depopulated for decades.
The war opens with a practical invasion of Denmark. The Leidangr were primarily stationed in central Germany, and while loyalists in Germania attempted to rally up an army to meet up with Eigil and Aleksandr's command in the north - the Alsverk, supported by seventeen thousand levied freemen and semi-trained soldiers, conquered Harald's political capital and and the Knytling castle in Sjaeland. Minimal resistance is presented; no major political leaders remain outside of the field, and Harald's actual army is preoccupied in stamping out the gathering army of the loyal German dukes, who form a bloc in west Germania. This is acomplished with relative ease, as Harald is generally more popular than Sigurd with the German dukes and electors, and those who opposed him form more isolated circles. His cause is little helped when the
Kappeidsman in Colonge declares his support for Sigurd as the heir to the Empire - though popular support is already well stilted out of his favor.
A serious of minor, if intense skirmishes follow, as dukes loyal to Harald contest Sigurd's advancement into Germania proper. The tactic seems a confusing one; forces of one or two thousand men engage at chokepoints, accomplishing little other than wasting bodies and slowing the main army's advance. Five thousand men die over nearly six months of this, with no word from the movements of Harald's main army - until they're spotted moving through Finnish territory by a scout loyal to Sigurd. The purpose of Harald's delay tactics become quite strikingly clear - he means to advance on Jafnadgr, where Sigurd himself still remains.
Eigil and Aleksandr immediately stake north to intercept.
Had they missed Harald's advancement for another month, it's likely they wouldn't have had the time to stop him from reaching Oslo. But as it were, the two armies meet at the border of loyal Imperial territory - just outside Uppland, faithful capital of the Jarldom of Sverige.
Harald's army is slightly smaller than the assembled forces of Sigurd, with seventeen thousand Leidangr to match Harald's nineteen thousand. While Sigurd's men have the benefit of the elite Alsverk and their veteran commanders, the majority of Harald's men are the better-trained professional soldiers of the Leidang against Sigurd's mostly-levied army. And worse still, Sigurd's forces are made to engage with the lake Malaren at their back, lest they allow Harald's army to continue unimpeded. Over forty thousand men take the field, both evenly-matched and led by fearless and utterly ruthless commanders.
The fighting starts on the eight of January. With intermittent breaks, the two camps continue fighting for two full months, skirmishing back and forth to probe the other side for weakness, looking for any opportunity to shatter the defenses of the other and rout their assembled forces wholesale. By the time that opportunity finally comes on the first of March, only twenty thousand soldiers - half of the original numbers - remain on either side of the field.
The slaughter outside Stockholm is the single most brutal battle in the history of the Union, and one of the worst massacres of the whole medieval world. Discounting sieges and small-scale, localized campaigns, the Battle of Stockholm has the verifiable highest death count of any battle fought in Europe to date. The blackshirts make their legend here - with Eigil at their head, the relative incompetence of the levy makes the visually-distinct Alsverk look like Gods on the battlefield, each one capable of killing as many men as his blade held for. On the first of March, a core of Blackshirt cavalry fracture the center of Harald's ranks, and the infantry that fill the gap widen it until Harald's troops are divided and fighting like cornered dogs, cut off from orders and facing down the seemingly unstoppable shock force of the Alsverk. All it takes for a single man to shout and run - and Harald's army is finally routed.
Through six years of political stalemate and the bloodiest and most destructive civil war ever faced by the Union, the Successor Wars finally come to an end. With his army shattered and unable to again match the still mostly-intact Blackshirts, Harald submits himself to Sigurd's court at Jafnadgr a few months later, claiming to wish no unnecessary bloodshed for the Imperium. Regardless of his intents, the damage has long since been done.
The levies and Leidangs that remain after the Battle of Stockholm are not dismissed from service.
After all, they have work to do.