Part Four
The Imperial Crisis
Felix IV, pictured in 1321 ER.
The nominal Fylkir, Felix IV, at the onset of January of 1321 ER, was left in perhaps the most difficult position of any Imperial Emperor in the last three centuries. Admittedly, of course, that was mostly his own fault.
The Union, with its soldiers stranded at the border of the League in the midst of a hard-fought war, was suddenly flung into violent, aggressive disarray. After the death of Felix III, the Imperium itself had split into two central factions; those loyal to the son of Felix III, Felix IV, who claimed the titles of Fylkir and Emperor despite being unconfirmed by the Imperial Assembly, and the central lords of the Assembly itself, who stood behind Alf, formerly the Jarl of Sweden, taking the title of interim Emperor while the Assembly internally decided proceedings for who ought be made Emperor next. The intensity of the conflict was made far worse given that three major auxiliary territories - Germany, Bohemia, and Lithuana - individually declared independence from the Union, and their imperial contracts null and void; depriving the Imperium of almost all the fertile and wealthy states and duchies of its southern territories, and placing a vast border of hostile territory between the Leidangr in Austria and the imperial conflict brewing in Scandinavia.
Frankly, few of the Leidangr were left loyal to Felix. As was the case with any feudal order, the Leidangr were loyal first and foremost to the lords of the region they had been drawn from, and Felix's rash and cruel personality had won precious few of the Jarls and Dukes over to his side. Only those immediately from the North Way, cowed into submission by virtue of proximity to the direct territories of the Emperor, maintained their loyalty; and even this was almost exclusively due to the influence of Einarr, the head of the Alsverk, or the numerous and elite house guard of the av Sverdklydige. The Imperial Guard, numbering only roughly three thousand men, swore their oaths of loyalty directly to the Emperor; and the Emperor had always been an av Sverdklydige. It is no false approximation to claim that the forces of Einarr's Alsverk, enforcing order in both Oslo and the Austrian legions on behalf of Felix IV, were perhaps the only reason why the young and unpopular Emperor had an army on his side at all; without the loyalty of the blackshirts diverting to him, those loyal legions would have been outnumbered ten to one.
As it were, there were still nearly three times the number of soldiers on the side of Alf and the imperial aristocracy when a Danish commander gave the order to cut down the Alsverk and the loyalist Leidangr that had flocked to them.
In the mountains of Tyrol, the Alsverk with Einarr and the loyalist Leidangr that remained with them had two crushingly important advantages, however. The first was that the aristocrats had made the first move, and attempted to advance onto the hastily-seperated loyalist position in the highly defensible Carpathian mountains, and the second being that the Alsverk, despite being outnumbered almost three to one, were the handpicked veteran elite of the Union, armed with the best swords of the North and years, if not decades, of combat experience. The larger force of the Imperial aristocracy found the position of the Alsverk almost impossible to dislodge; nestled defensible in the mountains, flanking around the smaller unit proved almost impossible, and when the drafted Leidangr were forced to go toe-to-toe with the elite comrades they had fought side by side against the Austrians just weeks earlier, they found they were no match for the Union's veterans. The battle at Tyrol was only a short skirmish before the aristocrat's forces withdrew to beat a hasty retreat to Sweden, but the Alsverk had killed three of them for every one they'd lost. And more importantly - Imperial axes had drawn Imperial blood. The opening salvos of civil war, marked with battle-shouts and the blasts of proto-cannons, had been fired.
In Jafnadgr, the situation was no more pleasant. As though the very Gods were disapproving of the capricious Felix IV claiming the title of Fylkir, their representative on earth, a plague of smallpox ravaged through Norway and the Imperial territories, while almost entirely ignoring the populations of Denmark and Sweden. This was more than a simple plague, hurting Felix's pockets and his pools of recruits; it was a sign from the Gods of their disfavor, and the people of the Union were not ignoring it. Thousands died in the first few months of the war, and even the seers and priests of Jafnadgr itself spoke in the streets, openly, about the foul omen of Hulder, casting a dire portent to signify that the Gods had rejected Felix IV as their bannerman. Av Sverdklydige or not, he was unworthy, and no will from his father would change that.
The first weeks of the war, then, were disastrous, at least towards every measure that Felix himself attempted to handle. His troops had won at Tyrol, not that he would hear of it for a month more, but across Jafnadgr and Oslo, chaos and mutiny ran wild as Alf and the aristocrats raised a proper army in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Felix's efforts, with Einarr far south in Austria and few competent commanders at Jafnadgr turning to his cause over the older and more respected nobles of the Union, were by contrast far slower and more difficult, hampered by disease, riots, and incompetence. From across the Imperial territories and the few petty nobles willing to donate him their troops or knights, Felix managed to raise around four thousand men in total under his banner in the months from January to April, mostly recruited from the young and old of Oslo and Jafnadgr; the real soldiers of true fighting age and veteran warriors had all been in Austria, hastening back to the North to fight for their respective lords. What few Alsverk remained in Jafnadgr as peacekeepers and enforcers formed the core of this hastily-assembled army; and as Felix marched out of the city with it, enforcement within the plague and riot-struck city was quite suddenly left only to the underequipped and poorly-manned local constabulary.
Felix, in the meantime, callously seized the various trade posts and minor outcroppings of disloyal nobles on the outskirts of crown territory, testing his fresh and largely inept army in minute scuffles to get his bearings. And for all the disadvantages arrayed against him, Felix had one other trick on his side, other than the elite Alsverk and their loyal commander; his brilliant aunt, Elisabet.
Mistrusted, heavily disfigured from battle and disease, and married to a wealthy and completely disloyal German duke, Elisabet returned to her nephew's court in July of 1321 ER, as Felix's financial ineptitude had already spent the hefty Imperial treasury and began to rack up debts attempting to arm and finance his toy army. Although brash, growling, and uncomfortably direct, Elisabet understood intimately how to administrate and delegate territory, and had over the course of twenty years at the highest and wealthiest courts of the Empire acquired a large host of competent seneschals and underlings. Einarr, the penultimate Sergeant of the Union, arrived two months later; and between the reinforcement of the elite Alsverk and Elisabet taking control of the finances and administration of Felix's newly-acquired territories, the new Imperial army quickly began to reorganize itself into something verging on a fighting force, consolidating and reorganizing newly-armed units as they prepared to face the weight of the inevitably larger army the aristocrats would bring to bear. And for the immense incompetence and outright brash cruelty Felix displayed, the careful considerations of these two advisors - Einarr and Elisabet - would grant his claim to the Imperial throne a sudden semblance of competent legitimacy that it had sorely lacked in those first terrible months.
Meanwhile, the Austrians, baffled and taken by utterly pleasant surprise at the outbreak of infighting and sudden retreat of the Imperial armies, simply seized all the territory they had lost and then far more. The armies of the dukes of Germany eventually stopped their advance as they approached Hessen, where the wealthy Herstrug made their stay, and the Austrian armies simply retired without conflict; they had already seized vast swathes of territory back from the Union, and were more than pleased with the sudden turn of events.
By November of 1321 ER, Felix's army stood at a respectable ten thousand men, with enough money to last them for some months. Headed by Einarr, the first sighting of the forces of the aristocrats came in Vastergotland, numbering around twelve thousand; with perhaps ten thousand more rallying to the south, near Lithuania. Einarr moved the Imperial army around through the forests of central, sweden, attempting to outmaneuver the aristocratic forces and force a conflict near Varmland, where the aristocratic armies would be forced to fight through the dense forests and thick rivers at Einarr's own discretion. Surprisingly, however, the forces of the aristocracy split off entirely, and refuse to engage, despite their superior position. Einarr, and Felix with him, are utterly baffled by their avoidance -
Until they see the invasion force of the British, freshly arrived in central Sweden.
In the interim, as the forces of the Christian south realign to the massive power vaccum within central and northern Europe, the British Empire have landed a vigorous invasion fleet in the untouched homelands of the Imperial Union, far stronger than the shattered empire is able to provide in the midst of fighting one another tooth and nail. Twenty thousand men storm out into Sweden alone, and, due to nothing more than unfortuante provision, pursue towards Felix's forces first. Einarr is a skilled commander, and the Alsverk are among the best infantry forces that Europe has ever seen, but there is little he can do in the face of twenty thousand heavily-armed British soldiers, supported with artillery and heavy cavalry, crashing into barely ten thousand men, three quarters of which have never seen a serious battle in their lives.
The batteis nothing short of a massacre, with nearly half of Felix's army dead as the British army regroups to pin them between another force of ten thousand. That Einarr was able to pull back with most of the Alsverk and three thousand of the Leidangr is an achievement in itself; there would be no holding back the organized force of thirty thousand of the British Empire's finest. Instead, the efforts of the shattered loyalist troops becomes a great deal more simple; attempting to redirect the British forces towards the aristocrats and their own armies.
In the meantime, the French themselves, equally unfettered by any need for restraint, rather casually seize Alsace-Lorraine once more, pushing deep into the Lorraine that had once been such a dispute between the two empires, and the source of so many wars. Now, nothing more than trivial local militias oppose the Frenchmen as they seize all of the border region once more - including the fertile lands of Alsace, where the Herstrug Emerlich, Elisabet's husband, presides. The mere sight of the French army approaching is enough to receive a pledge of fealty from Emerlich, unconvinced that the new King of the Germans has any plans to relieve him from the far superior French forces.
The war in Scandinavia slogs on almost endlessly, as the British forces tear down castle after castle to wrench back the hands of the broken aristocracy; seemingly more interested in pillaging and domination than simply seizing the northern isles. In contrast to the fertile regions of Bayern and Alsace, the fight for the northern isles with the British had, of course, never been a matter of territory; Orkney is practically worthless for its industry. So, instead, the British armies extract their wealth through raiding, having long since seized the northern territories they desired. The only Imperial force left to seize vulnerable territories are - the Russians.
Once the most steadfast allies of the Union, the Russians have long since become tenacious foes of the Northerners. And with the Imperial armies briefly forced out of Lithuania, as the Jarl lends some aid to the aristocrats against the invading British forces, the Russians take their chance to seize a massive swath of northern territory, separating the Lithuania and Finnish regions and taking the valuable warm-water ports of Ingria. Cut off entirely from their only land route to the southern territories, the Russian seizure leaves the Imperials only able to advance towards the south from a single direction - through Denmark, held entirely in aristocrat hands.
Elsewhere, the tide of battle falters, hesitates, and then collapses. Two long years pass of skirmish after skirmish, but despite Einarr's skillful maneuvering, Felix's utter inability to wn allies means that even as he extorts every last penny from the deep pockets of Jafnadgr and Oslo, his armies are consistently outmatched by the arranged forces of his enemies. The aristocratic cause, even with the British looting, only grows stronger; more and more draw to their banner each day as Felix cruelly extracts the wealth of the crown territories through tooth and nail, and even the hard-hearted Alsverk he uses as enforces grow increasingly wary of his cause as the war slogs on. And finally, when it comes to confrontation, Felix's meagre armies are driven by the young Fylkir towards his enemies outside Stockholm - and left facing down, once more, a force twice their strength.
Einarr, for all his commanding presence and impressive marshalling of the lackluster forces of Felix's half-assembled armies, is able to do precious little as the Imperial forces are pressured, surrounded, and completely overrun. Out of options and out of hope, the forces of Felix's new Fylkirate are crushed - and very nearly to a man.
The camps of the Imperials are systemically looted and devastated, and what prisoners are taken are executed on the spot, with neither mercy nor remorse from the aristocrats pulling the reigns. Einarr himself barely manages to escape the slaughter at all, with scarcely two thousand loyalist troops. And Felix, having left the realm in absolute ruins, is left with perhaps two thousand men, a completely empty treasury, and riots and bandits stirring the streets of Jafnadgr as a force of thirty thousand aristocratic troops begin the short march from Stockholm to Jafnadgr to end this civil war once and for all at the behest of the new Emperor-and-Fylkir, Alf.
Penniless, broken, and hopeless. The only chance left for the av Sverdklydige, and perhaps the Union as a whole, comes from its own destruction.
Felix the Fourth, throughout the extent of his life, had been a cruel, violent, and consistently exploitative ruler, neither diplomatic nor skilled in his own manipulations. But he had never been stupid, and he had never been evil; the boy, only twenty-five, was diligent and focused, continually racking his brain in consultations with Elisabet and his cadre of close advisors on how best to put together a war machine that could defeat the overwhelming force of the aristocrat's rule. But the ferocity of his cruelty, and the endless layer of schemes and ostracizations he had put together, attempting to cow the lords of the Union into line with intimidation he clearly could not back up and threats that would not be followed through had left any hope of an Imperial recovery completely shattered. And so, on the sixteenth of May, as the noose closed around the neck of the Imperium, a lone man appeared in Felix's chambers, approaching as the young Fylkir brooded and fretted over his plans and machinations for holding back the great army that was approaching Jafnadgr.
There would be no pomp - no ceremony - no grand battle of wills or chances at defense.
Only, without warning or prompt, a knife in the dark.
And a new face for the ancient lords of the Union.
