Thanks for the other likes
@Idhrendur and
@Midnite Duke
Archimedes I immediately made the differences between himself and his father known when he ascended the throne. He blocked his mother’s attempts to keep control over the Epirote court, and he began making friends with the most prominent members of the great families. He wrote great speeches about his ambitions for his time on the throne. He spent much of his first year in office ensuring that the military had not atrophied from his father’s neglect.
Most of the notable families in Epirus welcomed this change in policy. They still adhered to the early Epirote martial ethos, and many saw Alexarchos’s pacifism as shameful. Even those who generally liked Alexarchos’s building projects approved of Aphrodisia’s loss of power, having disliked how untraditional a woman ruling was. All in all, Archimedes’s early reign saw him make few enemies and a lot of friends.
This impression was helped by the fact that his early reign featured a war of expansion, something that most of the nobles had been waiting for for years by this point. The Great Getian War began in April 19 AS (655 AUC), and it was the first war in Epirote history to completely exclude both mercenaries and independent levies. Instead, the stratoi did all of the fighting.
The war started off well with an easy victory over a few barely trained Getian tribesmen in August at Tamasidava, but hints of a problem began to emerge around November 1 after the Battle of Inatius. That battle had been between the professional stratoi of Epirus and a large army of mercenaries that Getia had hired, and it had lasted a mere day. The result was an Epirote victory, but casualties on either side were light, which angered Archimedes.
The Basileus was worried that Getia had hired more mercenaries and would eventually overwhelm his stratoi with sheer numbers. He had told his legates to pursue a policy of divide and conquer to prevent this, but that strategy relied on massive amounts of enemy casualties and very few casualties among his stratoi. Archimedes’s attempted solution to this issue was… confusing. He attempted to place himself in charge of a stratos, reasoning that he could lead better from the front. None of his legates liked this idea, and he was overruled by his council. He begrudgingly backed down, but the incident was to be a portent of things to come - and some historians argue that this moment was the one where Classical Epirus truly began to fall.
The next two battles of the war were mercifully free from political constraints. In January 20 AS (656 AUC), the stratoi won a quick victory at Oridava, while a much more difficult battle occurred in February. That was the Battle of Cruciatum, which pitted the trained Epirote legions against another mercenary force and lasted for weeks. It ended in an Epirote victory, but the mercenaries retreated into Thrace, where the stratoi could not follow them without causing a diplomatic incident.
After Cruciatum, none of the Epirote scouts spotted any armies - whether of mercenaries or of tribesmen raised to defend their homeland. Archimedes I eventually concluded that there were no armies left in Getia, and the Epirotes were free to besiege their remaining settlements at leisure. That was exactly what they did…
It was also why the stratoi and Archimedes I himself were so surprised when they discovered a massive army in late August. The news would take some time to reach Archimedes, but, once it did, the king immediately initiated peace negotiations with Getia. By October 20 AS (656 AUC), an agreement had been reached, and Epirus annexed most of the southern half of Getia.
The reason why there had been such a quick peace agreement was a mystery, and it quickly became the source of court rumors. Some believed that Archimedes was worried about his professional armies suffering a defeat, which would result in a loss of leverage. Others whispered a worse rumor - they theorized that Archimedes I expected his own armies to win the upcoming battle - and gain their commanders glory. This theory went that he was jealous of their success and wanted to prevent them from earning any more fame. Both theories have merit - Archimedes I later became famous for making bad decisions because of his jealousy, but the greatest war of his reign was prosecuted with a minimum of interference on his part, which indicates that he could have been worried about a defeat.
(map of the world after the Great Getian War with Epirus in dark yellow)
imperator.paradoxwikis.com
