(Authors Note: Sorry for the slight delay everybody. From this chapter onwards, I will be experimenting with a new writing style and be focusing on making chapters much more detailed then per usual, hence why chapters are only lasting for a couple in-game years. I apologies in advance for my tardiness, I'm definitely hard at work! Also, I will point out that this chapter might be a little bit more gruesome then the other ones, so I will add a slight warning just incase anyone doesn't really like what happens with a horrible sack/siege in detail)
Chapter 36: The Kingdom of God (1615-1618)
With an Elysian victory against the coalition against them in the First Europa War, the time would come to turn the matters of the Empire back towards the Vinland. Having long been considered as the Empire’s first ally in this new world, the historical friendship between the two realms was replaced by a bitter hatred for one another. From the Norse Vinlanders to the Christian Elysians, what started as a hatred for both one another's culture and faith was becoming more and more brutal.
With the ascension of Elysia towards unparalleled prestige and power, Vinland had been entering into a slow decline. While it was still able to put up a fight against their southern enemy, they would prove that the arctic northerners were simply unable to compete. From the insanity of the Mad King, to the talented yet hostile Konungurs that held the realm since, Vinland as a state was collapsing as a whole. Yet despite this, both Christian and Norse Vinlanders would live among one another in a place where two worlds would meet.
Vinóss, having long been the capital of the north, was the political, spiritual and economic heart of Vinland. It was the wealthiest city located north of the Borealian Lakes, and it was extremely rich among the grand cities of the New World. It served as the seat of power of the Konungur, along with the higher echelon of the Norse Gothi. While retaining a large Norse majority, the demographics of the city would change among the decades as it had more contact with Elysia and the rest of the world. Christian Vinlanders, one a miniscule minority where practicing the faith openly was once a crime punishable by death, was now a very sizeable minority. Interestingly, the city also had a tiny collection of other spiritual groups from all corners of the globe, such as Jewish bankers and Islamic merchants, who wanted to make a life in the New World but couldn’t compete with the breakneck pace that occurred in Nea Konstantinopolis.
It was because of the significance of Vinóss that the Empire desired to end Norse hegemony in the North. After having occupied the capital in the last two previous wars, an enormous amount of territory would be ceded to the Elysians. First would be all of Thorfinn Bay, then the borderlands between Elysia and Vinland. Now, the Empire was mere miles away from the Jewel of the North. Despite Vinlandic agression, one that aggravated the Imperial government to no end, the north would not learn its lesson in provoking the Empire that had destroyed them in every single military conflict.
In a declaration of war to the Althing, the Empire remained incredibly determined to deliver a devastating blow to Vinland. The Emperor and Senate wished to deliver a blow so devastating, so decisive, that the Althing and the State would never recover.
The moment that the declaration of war had arrived, almost a hundred thousand soldiers would march into the frozen north and bring the entire northern realm to a complete standstill. Vinland was incredibly unprepared for a conflict with the Empire, and Elysia would do everything in its power to maintain that advantage for the time being. The Fleet would sail into the bay and launch a blockade of the main armada and several important locations, ideally the capital.
The Konungur, Lief IV Johanson, would not be in Vinóss when war was declared, but instead inspecting the main northern army in Burke. Once that information had arrived that Elysia had invaded the north, Lief would gather the unprepared yet large army and march as fast as possible to break an inevitable siege of Vinóss. Unfortunately, once they crossed into Timburtland, the northern army walked into a trap.
Led by the ever brave and skilled commander Alexios Diogenes, the elite Elysian forces took the marching northerners by complete surprise and launched a great ambush. The Elysian commander would use an unorthodox method of blending into the environment, having his own personal army blend into the trees and white snow during the middle of winter as the enemy passed them. Lief IV and his army tried to break the attack, but instead many Norsemen simply dropped like flies. The Konungur and several thousand survivors would march away from the ambush, but the damage had already been done. The Battle of Timburtland would become the Vinlandic Teutonburg, and caused immense psychological stress among the surviving army who escaped.
Across the bay, families and wives openly wept in the streets at about the disaster of Timburtland. A sense of hysteria and terror washed over the Norse in Helluland, Markland and other Vinlandic territories. The loss of a vast majority of the Vinlandic army had left the north wide open and weak. Lief IV, who survived the battle, would forever be a changed man after the battle. The Peninsular was left wide open, and while the remaining armies regrouped in the north, Alexios Diogenes would become nicknamed the “The White Ghost” by other Elysian commanders, and earn his place in history.
The situation among the Vinlandic Althing had deteriorated rapidly within simply months. Smaller enemy units attempted to raid the larger battle-hardened Elysian forces in a fools attempt to cover their comrades retreat and slow the Imperial army down. It would prove useless by the Norse, and it would leave them helpless as Elysia broke the Althing apart piece by piece.
Christians were given the opportunity to have safe passage out of the capital before the siege started, but the Althing largely refused escaping christians from leaving out of fears that it could undermine their siege efforts. Some sensed a betrayal by the Althing for abandoning them and sentenced them to die, which prompted a revolt among its walls as the Elysians spent the time preparing siege equipment and organizing a bombardment of the walls.
For just over a hundred days, Vinóss would hold its own until it would succumb to the Imperial Army. The northern capital, which held a population close to a hundred and fifty thousand, had panic among the streets in the religiously mixed city. Great Blots were apparently practised behind its walls, with countless animals being ritually sacrificed within moderation as a means to ward off the Elysians. Christian scouts outside of the city walls from a high altitude were able to spot the sacrifices taking place, where disturbingly, some scouts would mention talks of human sacrifice occurring behind its walls. An Elysian commander by the name of Manuel Bardanes would take command of the siege, a well-known siege specialist within the Imperial army.
Within the first few weeks of the siege, any help from the remaining Vinlandic armies in the north faded as Elysian forces completely surrounded the city and the surrounding area. Starvation and disease would spread rapidly throughout Vinóss, where bodies would be left to rot in the streets. Grain among the defenders would be rationed, and Bardanes would strangle any outside relief that would come towards the city, ordering a blockade at the mouth of the river.
Weeks of siege would cause the population of the capital to dwindle from disease and starvation. Civilians would fight among themselves for food as their rations dwindled from the continuing siege. Negotiations would take place routinely during the siege, where Elysia would offer reasonable terms of surrender. Week after week, the Empire would offer different terms to the Vinlanders, some more generous than others. The Althing, who was trapped within their city without the Konungur, still served as the leaders of the nation and refused any offer the Elysians made. The Althing council and the Norse elite, motivated and united by war and hatred of Elysians, held strong for the next several months
After three and a half months, Vinóss would be broken. Bardanes and his army would march through the city gates, where some of the defenders abandoned their brothers and sisters and opened the gates. For the next week, Vinóss would be sacked and razed for an entire week.
The Fall of Vinóss, depicted by an unknown Vinlandic painter who survived the siege.
A vast majority of the great buildings of Vinóss would be ransacked and destroyed by the Elysian armies. Any and all movable goods were stolen all across the city. Norse Temples across the city were burnt to the ground, and structural damage across the city was widespread. The Althing, who had barricaded themselves inside of the Hvulvkiethi Kethsstala, the mighty Vinlandic whalebone palace that represented Vinlandic nobility and power, were then burnt alive as the Empire torched the palace they were in along with other innocents. The city's malnourished citizens were murdered en masse as they were defenseless against the Imperial army. Many citizens were taken captive, some citizens would be ransomed, others would be sold into slavery, and an unfortunate amount would be raped and killed. Fastvi, Leif IVs sister, would be captured and raped by Elysians over the next week of violence before being taken as a political hostage.
After a week of violence, the flames of the city along with the brutality of the sacking had taken its toll. The slaughter of most of the inhabitants of the city and the burning of a majority of the capital sent shockwaves across the entirety of Vinland. Vinóss would largely be razed by the Elysians, and the population would crash from a hundred to fifty thousand at the start of the siege to just barely over seventy thousand largely due to food and disease mismanagement alongside the slaughter that took place once the gates were opened. Land-taxes plummeted and the Vinlandic economy entered a dangerous spiral.
After the conquest of the city, the war would continue as planned, but the very heart of Vinóss was crushed in the iron fist of the Elysian Empire. Plans for reconstruction would be planned after the war, where Vinóss was to be rebuilt. Vinóss, in the mind of a normal Vinlander, was dead.
With the fall of the capital, Vinland was exposed and naked. News of the destruction of the capital quickly made its way up towards the north, and had completely broken the spirits of the Norsemen. Some were encouraged to fight on against the Christian invaders, some simply dropped their arms and surrendered, and some would even go as far as to end their lives before the Elysians did.
Any last chance to avenge the Althing was taken at Helluland, but it would prove futile as two combined Thema had grouped up to conduct separate invasions of Markland and Helluland. Ragnarr Hahn and the remaining Vinlandic Army would be obliterated from the face of the earth, with the Norsemen going with it.
After forcing a submission of the Althing, the Konungur would surrender completely to Elysian authorities and make terms of surrender. Attrition had taken the lives of the Elysians as they marched into the winter as Vinlandic defenders sabotaged their own homeland, but combat losses were incredibly small in comparison to the Norsemen. In just eleven months, Vinland was simply decimated.
It was a very harsh peace, and the North would pay for it severely. What remained of the great city of Vinóss and a large portion of the surrounding areas would be ceded to the Empire. Emperor Basil would hold a triumph for the commanders for the invasion in the capital, celebrating their accomplishments. The Emperor and the Senate proclaimed that with the destruction of Vinóss, that the city would be rebuilt as a northern capital for Christian Vinlanders. The city would rise from its ashes like the phoenix and be rebuilt a haven in the north. The Senate had agreed on renaming the destroyed former capital into Nea Pontus, and that work to rebuilt the city would begin immediately once unsavory elements of the city’s past had been removed.
Rather than direct integration, the region around Nea Pontus was to be enlightened by Christian missionaries heading towards the north, all the while the great Thema’s marched down from the north and made their way back home. Provinces would be renamed, and more varangian elements would make their way to the life of the Christian Vinlanders.
With the growth of the Empire across the Pacific, it had access towards the bountiful riches of Asia. Imperial bureaucracy and merchants, as plentiful as they were, simply couldn’t be everywhere at once. Elysian interest within Asia was based around the hopes and ambitious aroused by enormous revenues produced by similar European companies. The Emperor himself, Basil I, wanted Elysia to play a larger and more dominant role in world trade. While not seen wholeheartedly by the Empire’s own merchants, the shift away from the domestic markets towards foreign ones started to make a shift into Imperial policy. On March 23rd 1616, the Elysian Empire would establish the East India Trading Company to oversee financial interests overseas.
Alexandros Psellos, who had been a faithful servant to the Empire for quite some time, had grown insolent. The leading advisor denounced the Emperor’s policies and ridiculed the Emperor in public, and even under the presence of foreign ambassadors. The Emperor would be humiliated under the insolent advisor, something he would not allow for any public servant of the Empire to partake. Several days later in the middle of the night, Alexandros Psellos would be dragged out of his home by members of the Imperial Guard, never to be seen again...
After eight years of construction, the Hagia Theotoke was completed on July 7th 1616. The grandest church of God west of Hellas and Europe had been completed, and its design harkened back to the inspiration of the Hagia Sophia. A domed roof made of bronze, marble floors and a grand gate inspired the glory of the faith to all who had seen it. Every inch of wall was decorated with grand frescoes, statues of saints and seraphim lined every single corridor. On one of the walls, many celebrated Elysian Emperors of the past was celebrated with decorative pieces such as statues and icons.
The Cathedral inspired all the might and glory of God, the saints and the Emperor’s who had made this project so. Pilgrims from Europe and across Elysium flocked to the new church, and served as a beacon of Imperial power across an entire continent. On the coming sunday, the Church would be officially opened by Emperor Basil, the Imperial Family and the Eccumencial Patriarch where they would hold the first Divine Liturgy.
From the importance of Foundation Day all those years ago, Nea Konstantinopolis had always been the centre of Elysian Culture and commerce. Since then, it had grown into the most prosperous and largest city in the New World. Much was to be done by the Empire if it was to truly earn the respect and admiration of the nations of Europe and beyond.
Within two years, most of the new territories would embrace Elysian Orthodoxy. As the reconstruction of Nea Pontus was underplace, many of the previously Norse survivors in the region would start hesitantly converting to Christianity for various reasons. It would still take some time for Christianity to become a majority within the region.
The Inca, long having been the ally of the Empire, requested the Empire to share its knowledge of the region of Central Elysia. Given the excellent relations between the two states, the Empire agreed wholeheartedly and brought the knowledge to the Inca.
In Europe, the Papacy had united the whole of Italy under Catholic rule. The Pope, given his new prestige and legitimacy among the Catholic world, had declared the Papal State as ‘The Kingdom of God’ along its own borders. Other European states would simply refer to Theocratic Italy as the ‘Papal Kingdom’. Catholics from all over Europe flocked to its banner, eager to live in the model nation of Christian virtue. Due to its newfound power, it would also mean that foreign powers would no longer heed to any serious Papal Bulls nor be able to control the College of Cardinals.
Towards Iberia, the Hispanian monarch would establish a new system among the Exarch called ‘Sunday Schools’. With the aim to provide education in religious and moral matters of less fortunate children, it was primarily to teach moral matters to youth and perhaps make them more loyal to the state and faith as a whole. The Empire would plan to create a system of its own in the near future, but due to its overwhelming size, it was to be implemented on a much larger scale.
With the expiration of a truce, the Empire prepared its mighty Thema once more to deal a devastating blow to the Ottoman Empire. It had been brought to its knees following the previous war with Elysia, and it was now time to break the Turk’s back. With the Turks plagued by continued unrest, the main focus of the campaign was to seize one of the most important cities in the Orthodox Pentarchy, the ancient christian city of Antioch.
As European and Elysian forces crossed into Turkish anatolia, it became apparent that there was not a single group of Turkish defenders to be seen anywhere. Had the situation among the Ottoman Turks, one the undisputed masters of the East, grown so dire that they couldn’t even muster or inspire their own people?
Regardless of the situation, the campaign was to continue as usual. With the advancing age of Basil I, he wished to secure one important objective of his reign before he would die, strengthening the Exarch of Constantina and returning Hellenic Hegemony of Anatolia back to its rightful masters.