Epilogue: Revolutions (1766–1791)
As patriot militias begin to occupy towns across Sølvfloden and Goanaparen, Roman armies advance through Hungary into eastern Meissen. Once again Ragnar is torn between his two crowns: the Great Thing in Helsingborg demands that he aggressively subdue the rebellious colonies, while the Landtag in Leipzig insists on the defense of its territories in Silesia and Moravia. After vacillating for some weeks and holding councils in both capitals, the Emperor orders three corps of crimsoncoats onto naval transports and launches them to Godvind to put down the American rebels; the rest of Ingvæonia's European forces are directed to the southeast to reinforce the defense of Meissen. The Great Thing, recognizing how the shortage of military manpower has limited the realm's striking power in its recent European wars, also enacts a new conscription law that will compel all adult men to register for military service with county registrars. The realm musters for war as never before.
This is fortunate, because during the winter of 1766–7, as the main Yngvish forces join the conflicts in Sølvfloden and Silesia, Lotharingia once again invades the Holy German Empire. The new Lotharingian King Henri-Jules is a gifted and inspiring statesman with fierce ambitions for his already powerful realm, and, like his father before him, he sees the Empire as the chief obstacle to his strategic goals. Lotharingia and its allies in Milan and Provence form a powerful military bloc of Reformed princes, and the Emperor in Köln hasn't the least chance of resisting them without the aid of the larger German principalities; a desperate call for solidarity goes out, and Ragnar is again forced to weigh his German ambitions against his other military goals. Despite the strenuous discouragement of the Great Thing, he accepts the Empire's call to arms and prepares for war on a third front.
Almost half of Ingvæonia's home armies are in Godvind and Goanapara, struggling to maintain order among the restive colonials and planning out their campaigns against the rebels who have seized Glædhavn and much of the South American interior; Meissen's armies are fully committed to the Roman front and the defense of their own core territories. The only forces Ragnar can contribute to the war along the Rhine are the garrisons from Holsten, Mikilenborg and Estland, whose withdrawal risks inviting renewed aggression from Russia. Fortunately, the Tsar has been facing internal struggles and unrest of his own, and Ragnar judges it safe to muster out most of his core garrisons to support Köln and the Empire.
Lotharingia's vast manpower and cutting-edge military tactics prove overwhelming, however, and King Henri-Jules personally commands his forces in a series of stunning victories over the Northmen. In the spring and summer of 1767 the royal Lotharingian army shatters two full corps of Yngvish soldiers, driving them north to the coast, only to then overrun them in their disarray and force their outright surrender before they can be rescued from the sea. Southern Denmark and Pomerania are left undefended, and Ragnar's generals scramble to establish a defensive line at the Ejder, counting on naval superiority to defend Helsingborg and abandoning any hope of further influencing the war in Germany.
After Ingvæonia's effective withdrawal from the Rhine war, Lotharingia has its way with the Empire's western flank. King Henri-Jules's troops occupy and annex the small Duchy of Picardy in late 1767, humiliating Köln and winning access to the sea after centuries of struggle. They also gain ground against the Irish in eastern Brittany, seizing a narrow strip of land running along the Norman border to the Bay of Mont Saint Miché, gaining a second path to the Ænglish Channel. At the same time, The Grand Duke of Milan shatters the armies of the Pope, compelling him to forswear his alliances with remaining Catholic princes and to acknowledge Milan's hegemony over the lesser Italian states. By the summer of 1769 Lotharingia's victory is complete.
The news from the other fronts is no more cheering. Byzantine forces quickly complete their occupation of Hungary, and Upper Silesia and eastern Moravia are ravaged by battle and looting as Meissen's forces desperately defend their homes against the Greek invaders. The Meissners just about hold on, which is more than can be said for the Yngvish forces in Sølvfloden. From their bases in the capital cities of Godvind and Goanapara, the loyalist armies embark on a grand pincer maneuver in 1767, aiming to cut off Glædhavn from its supplies and allies to the inland by joining up along the upper River Uruguaj. The force moving northward from Godvind, however, is delayed by relentless guerrilla harassment, and the northern force advances almost parallel with Glædhavn only to find itself surrounded by rebel militias in the interior country.
The Europeans do not fight well with short supplies in the trackless interior of a strange continent, and the corps is almost wiped out by the time it can regain the coast. Not long after this defeat, Goanapara itself is taken by an unexpectedly fierce rebel advance out of the northern highlands, its defenses weakened by the removal of the corps dispatched to encircle Glædhavn. The Siege of Goanapara marks a turning point in the revolution, after which the rebels fight with renewed morale and determination, and the loyalists largely cling to the coasts, shelling the major rebel-held ports and interdicting all trade but unable to make significant progress inland. Yngvish gunboats still prowl the major rivers, but by 1768 the interior essentially belongs to the rebels.
Worse is yet to come. As the Roman invasion in Silesia continues to deplete the realm's manpower, no significant reinforcements can be spared for the American war lest the Greeks break through into Posen or even Pomerania. Fighting on utterly unfamiliar ground, with little support and infrequent, confused communications from Europe, the imperial armies in Godvind slowly give ground, until the rebels control virtually all the rest of the colonies and besiege the capital in mid 1769. When he learns of the siege, Emperor Ragnar hesitantly orders some minimal reinforcements sent, but they arrive too late. The last major loyalist force is trapped against the Silver River coast and forced to surrender in the autumn of 1770. During the war the former colonial provinces have organized themselves into a republican confederation; at first the patriots from the southern provinces refer to their nascent polity as the "United Provinces of the Silver River," but after the war ends the Goanapareners insist on the more inclusive "United Provinces of America."
With no significant forces left in Sølvfloden and the war in Silesia at the point of stalemate, Ragnar is forced to negotiate a humiliating treaty with the Romans and his own rebels. In 1772 the Great Thing ratifies the Treaty of Constantinopolis, recognizing the Greeks' seizure of the remainder of Hungary along with the full independence of the United Provinces. Byzantium's power in eastern Europe waxes further, and the Yngvish Empire is bereft of its most expansive and prosperous colony.
As the peace treaty is negotiated, Emperor Ragnar's leadership is more and more harshly criticized in the Thing. Even Ragnar's traditional allies and supporters grumble that the Emperor should have been less hasty to commit the realm's forces to German conflicts with little bearing on Ingvæonia's interests; his enemies openly talk of imposing a
håndfæstning to restrict the monarch's prerogatives, as in the time of Emperor Leif II a century before. One burgess goes still further, castigating Ragnar to the Folketing as an indecisive dilettante driving the realm toward catastrophe in pursuit of his fantasies of German hegemony. Even the Emperor's critics are taken aback by the audacity of the diatribe, and indeed the man has crossed a line: he is shortly arrested on charges of
lèse majesté and expelled from the Thing. Prince Yngvar, now thirteen years old, is present for the offending speech, and he privately marvels at his father's failure to win the confidence and support of the Thing. The Prince is a far more diplomatic sort than Ragnar, and he swears to himself that he will never allow his relations with the Great Thing to deteriorate to such a poor state.
As it happens, the Prince has little more time to imagine himself ruling the realm before the reality arrives. After his disastrous universal defeat in the Byzantine, Lotharingian and American wars, Emperor Ragnar sinks into a humiliated depression from which he never emerges. Heavy eating and drinking and determined sloth quickly undermine his health, and by the spring of 1774 Ragnar has ceased leaving his chambers in Helsingborg Palace. He finally dies of pneumonia in a dark and musty bedchamber that summer, a disappointment to his noble line, and few earnestly mourn his passing. He was only thirty-seven years old; his twin sons, Princes Yngvar and Odd, are just short of their shared fifteenth birthday. The Great Thing duly recognizes Yngvar as its new monarch, only to receive the shocking news that the Meissner Landtag has chosen to instead acclaim Odd as King of Meissen!
The proclamation is accompanied by the bizarre assertion that the Landtag in Leipzig is in possession of secret evidence that Odd is, in fact, the firstborn of the two brothers and King Ragnar's rightful heir. This is patent nonsense, but the charge muddies the waters enough to let the German estates convince themselves to bend their succession laws and break the personal union with Ingvæonia. The brothers are not close, and Odd departs smugly for Leipzig with a train of followers to take his unexpected throne, while Yngvar comes to terms with the sudden diminution of his inheritance. After the first shock passes, Yngvar and his cabinet receive an envoy offering an alliance with the King of Poland; Poland is an historical enemy, but Odd's accession in Meissen throws a long-established friendship into turmoil, and the cabinet judges it safest to accept Poland's offer. The end of the personal union has overturned traditional strategic diplomacy in northeastern Europe.
In the late summer of 1775 Yngvar comes of age and receives his formal coronation as Emperor of Ingvæonia and the North. Addressing the Thing and the imperial court for the first time as Emperor Yngvar II, he frankly acknowledges his father's failures and the realm's struggles over the previous two decades. During his reign Yngvar says he means to see Yngven rebuild its military power through army modernization, but he also emphasizes the need to restore Helsingborg's soft power. Ragnar's confrontational colonial policy and abrasive personal manner cost him the diplomatic influence that might have averted the American rebellion or cultivated more allies for the German wars; to be mighty in war the administration must make better use of its powers in peace. As his regnal motto indicates, Emperor Yngvar means to see that his empire is equally prepared for both:
Ad Utrumque Paratus.
The coronation is a success, and the young Emperor almost immediately develops a warmer rapport with the Thing than his father ever managed. As the new administration finds its feet, news comes in early 1776 that the Duke of Köln has died, and the German electors have chosen King Odd as the new Holy German Emperor—sixteen-year-old Odd has achieved the goal that ultimately eluded his father. At his coronation before the Reichstag in Frankfurt, Odd emphasizes the totality of his commitment to the security and prosperity of the Empire, down to its least prince or lord mayor; though his roots are in the North, he means to rule as a German King and Emperor, and he will defend Meissen and Germany's interests wherever he sees them. This explicit renunciation of Odd's ties to the Northern Realm seems to confirm that no comfortable renewal of the old alliance between Helsingborg and Leipzig can be expected any time soon.
At the same time, growing reports from the east suggest that the Byzantine Empire may have bitten off more of the Balkans than it can chew. Persistent unrest and uprisings in the Hungarian lands now under Roman rule have combined with the massive debts the crown accrued fighting aggressive wars against Germany and Ingvæonia to form a real crisis for Constantinopolis. Heavy new taxes have been levied to restore the government's financial health, but the manpower lost in generations of warfare and the economic disruption inflicted by Yngvish naval depredations in the Aegean have seriously damaged the Byzantine economy. How Roman Emperor Simon II will navigate the crisis is unclear.
Emperor Yngvar quickly proves to be a capable leader, and the efficiency of government improves noticeably. He assembles a cabinet of advisors whose competence is proven and whose dedication to the welfare of the realm is beyond question, and he does it by looking beyond traditional circles: his ministers include the Catholic Duke of Northern Norway, and they are led by the Lord Mayor of Hamborg—the first commoner ever to serve as chief minister in an Yngvish government. Despite some grumbling from traditionalists (chiefly in the Landsting), this diverse cabinet governs the realm admirably. Yngvar devotes far more attention and resources to his foreign ministry than his father did, working hard to strengthen ties with his vassal kings in Skotland and Sweden and to rebuild traditional alliances in Ireland and the Netherlands, all while cultivating new friendships in Occitania and Galicia (states that have fought alongside the Yngvish in recent wars and share Yngven's rivalries).
In 1779 the United Provinces adopt a new federal constitution, establishing a stronger central government with the power to tax the provinces. The new American constitution includes an explicit Charter of Rights detailing the freedoms of the citizens upon which the state may not infringe. The Americans have also begun planning a new city to serve as their federal capital, located some six hundred miles inland along the River Parana; its defensible central location is meant as a compromise among Glædhavn, Godvind and Goanapara, all of which sought to host the seat of government. All in all, the republican experiment in the United Provinces appears to be working out rather well, much to the dismay of conservatives and sore losers in Ingvæonia who would have preferred to see the rebel state collapse upon itself in the absence of its rightful monarch.
Indeed, others have also noticed that the sky has not yet fallen upon the United Provinces, and separatist unrest is on the rise in the North American colonial governorates. In the 1780s sporadic uprisings begin in Vinland and New Denmark, though without the scale or determination shown by the southern rebels. Yngvar is determined to keep the peace in Denmark's oldest colonies, and he reaches out to colonial elites to explore measures that the crown can take to ease tensions before another revolution develops.
As if nature itself smiles on Yngvar's rule, the Northlands enjoy a series of excellent harvests, punctuated by a truly exceptional year in 1779. The economic wounds of the recent wars seem to have largely healed, though the mercantile class is still suffering from the loss of South America's ports and commodities. In 1782 the bounty of nature extends even to the imperial household, when Yngvar's first son is born. The Emperor names the boy Erik, after the High King who sheltered the Lollards and sowed the seeds of the Danish Reformation; Yngvar prays that his son, too, will be a visionary and a righteous leader, unswayed by the opinions of men.
The people of Pskov are gradually growing accustomed to their new political allegiance, and the city's Trinity Cathedral has been reconsecrated in the Ingvæonican Church, though Orthodox services will continue in a simultaneum. The fortress city will provide a helpful bulwark against future Russian aggression in Estland.
A few years after Emperor Yngvar approves the new alliance with Poland, the Polish King invades the Free Duchy of Litauen. Lithuania is Poland's only small, non-aligned neighbor, and the Litauener lands offer a path to the sea for the Polish rump state. With the recent cooling of Ingvæonia's relations with Meissen, Yngvar's government judges it wise to allow Poland to build up its strength as a buffer state against rivals to the east and south, and does not intervene when Warsaw annexes the duchy outright in 1783.
In the 1780s Russia is racked by unrest and insurrection, driven by weak leadership in Kyiv and the economic tensions created by the military defeat inflicted upon the Tsardom by Emperor Einar VI. First the Buddhist Cumans and Bulgars in Russia's eastern marches rise up against the Tsar, and the divided and indebted government in Kyiv is hard pressed to contain the revolts. Then, a Ryazanian nobleman raises an army and proclaims himself the new Grand Prince of Ryazan, and, remarkably enough, succeeds in expelling the demoralized imperial garrison from the city. By the end of the decade,
de facto-independent Cuman and Bulgar states have been reborn in the Urals, and an independent Principality of Ryazan has successfully won an armistice with the Tsar, while Kyiv strains to maintain its grip on its remaining territories. These internal conflicts completely remove Russia from the geopolitical stage in the 1780s, though a stronger Tsar could likely reunite the realm in the years to come.
The rumble of unrest is also shaking the Eastern Roman Empire, where a rolling financial crisis has brought the government to its knees. Byzantium is certainly the richest state in Europe, yet the Empire's extremely regressive system of taxation keeps the vast wealth of the nobility and the Church largely out of the taxman's reach. Emperor Simon's ministers increasingly insist that the state's only realistic hope of raising more revenue is to reduce the tax exemptions enjoyed by the great houses and the Orthodox Church, but there is (unsurprisingly) passionate opposition to this proposal in the imperial court. In 1789, desperate to avoid a humiliating bankruptcy, the Basileos takes the extraordinary step of calling the first meeting of the Roman Senate in almost three hundred years.
Delegates are selected from across the vast Empire, with local elections producing a plebeian contingent to accompany the representatives of the noble houses and the Church. When the thousand or so senators gather in Constantinopolis, they are presented with the Emperor's demands for increased tax revenues and a number of proposals as to how they can be raised. Rather than providing the political cover for an unpopular tax that the government had hoped for, however, the body quickly descends into heated debates about the relative authority of the patrician and plebeian delegates and the role of the commoners in Byzantine society. As tempers rise and more and more grievances are aired, many of the plebeian senators (and more than a few lesser clergymen) begin to discuss fundamental change to the system of government.
Voicing the Enlightenment ideas of popular sovereignty and human rights that have filled the salons and newspapers of Constantinopolis for decades (and, ironically, the republican ideals of the American revolution recently aided by the Emperor), the majority of the delegates soon vote to walk out from the talks and reconstitute themselves as the
Ethnosynklētos, the National Senate, a body to represent not the traditional estates of society but the citizens of the Empire. When the panicked Emperor tries to lock the unruly senators out of the ancient senate hall, they reconvene on a polo field overlooking the Bosphorus and take a collective oath not to separate until Rome has a written constitution establishing the rights of its citizens.
As the National Senate continues to meet over the next two years, it produces progressively more and more radical proclamations, declaring equal taxation for all classes, abolishing serfdom and slavery, and forbidding the Church to compel citizens to pay a tithe. The Emperor and the court are furious—and terrified; a few abortive attempts to disperse or arrest the members of the National Senate fail when crowds of supportive townsfolk drive off the soldiers sent for the task. Constantinopolis descends into chaos and mob rule, and the radical proclamations keep coming.
A new constitution finally emerges in early 1791, establishing a new permanent Senate to enact legislation, composed of representatives elected by taxpaying men from some sixty-odd new Themes into which the realm is to be reorganized, and restricting the Emperor to a consultative role, with only a delaying veto over the acts of the Senate. In early summer the alarmed imperial family attempts to flee the capital in disguise, only to be caught and placed under house arrest by the bailiffs of the National Senate. At this point it is clear that a true revolution has begun, and Emperor Simon no longer rules the Empire.
As the world looks on in excitement or horror, the Roman Empire begins a transformation that will upend the certainties of Christendom and usher in a new Age of Revolutions. Which states and nations will ride this great storm of change to new heights of power and prosperity, and which will be dashed upon the rocks of history, remains to be seen. It is already certain, however, that the lines of influence and allegiance that cross the continent will be redrawn forever in the coming convulsions.
One age ends, and another begins...
