Chapter 2 - The Conquest of Tripolitania - 1419-1423
Ok, so let the crusade begin!!! On May 29, 1419 our force of 6000 knights and 6000 swordsman loaded in our 13 gallays and embarked in a journey to conquer our new capital, Tripolitania! The journey occurred without major incidents,except that upon arriving at our target our scout ship saw a huge
tunisian armies stationed there ... The generals warned Felipe that although the Vikings and Normans were great at amphibious assaults, we had no such training, so we decided to disembark in unguarded Tunisia instead. Of course an armed fleet moving here and there in the tunisian coast alarmed the tunisians and their fleet spotted us and defeated us, preventing our disembark. After hearing of the battle our fellow crusaders in Cyprus joined our war, while Tlemcen dishonored the Military Alliance with Tunisia. The infidels really have no honor!
Despite our first loss we went for a second try, defeated the tunisian fleet and landed ... phew ... we were only able to start our siege in January 1420, 6 months after the war started! During our siege of Tunisia they attacked us with a huge army of about 13000 soldiers, but luckily they were composed by crazy muslim peasants armed with long knifes and a tiny light cavalry. Arrows from our infantry and a cavalry charge with long spear destroyed them completely with little loses. Our greatest loses were in the sea due to transports sinking and now our army had about 7000 solders, with an extra reinforcement of 3k archers and 3k knights being slowly trained in Rhodes. While our ships were returning to get reinforcements in Rhodes the tunisian ships attacked them, and destroyed most of it, but at a great price for them too =( From now on we would need to transport reinforcements of only 3k at a time.
On May 22, 1421 we captured the province of Tunisia and after some more battles against large amounts of crazy peasants we invaded our primary target: Tripolitania. The siege lasted between September 14, 1421 and October 10, 1422. At the same time our small fleet managed to get our reinforcements on ground and we were marching to Kabylia. In 1423 we captured Kabylia finishing the insane resistance of Tunisia. The Tunisian Emir signed a peace treaty with us giving up his tirany in lands of Kabylia and Tripolitania =)
There was a great party in the streets as the catholics from North Africa were free from oppression. We moved our capital to Tripolitania, including the council, barracks, even whole churches and castles were transported to our new home! Despite this success, the promised underground community was less then impressive for Felipe. In Kabylia the community immediately embraced catholicism as the true church and all mosques were destroyed and burned, but in Tripolitania they remained stubborn and rebellious. The tunisian priest was called to answer for that and he promised us to bring them to light if we would fund education efforts. He was sure that if they heard the words of our Lord, they would believe.
On the economical side our conquests reduced our funds from 400k gold coins to a little over 100k and after paying our army and our military alchemists studying gunpowder weapons there was nothing left to increase our funds. Also many tunisian pirates sacked our ships transporting gold from Kabyilia, which reduced our collected taxes.
Here is an overview of our empire:
Our new neighbors in Tlemcen were very unhappy about our conquests and sent a piece of paper with lot's of small curved lines on it which our monks interpreted as a treat. Felipe preferred to interpret it as toilet paper and put it to good use. Another such hygiene item came from the Ghazi turks and we heard of a great alliance being formed threatening to attack us in case we invaded Tunisia again.
