Chapter 23: Frank Fries
From 474 until the start of the war, the Vandal Warlords grew increasingly impatient while they waited for the Southern road to Marseilles to finish, which needed to happen before war could be declared. Some wanted to go and attack now anyway- but they knew they had to wait.
That was all they could do in the meantime, sit around in their cities and practice cutting things in half with axes. The forests were finally cut down in 479, allowing the road construction to begin, and the road was finished at the end of 480. Nothing else happened in the meantime, although word had reached them that the Huns had recaptured Dobrich from the Sassanids.
In 482, all preparations were complete. Gaiseric went to King Clovis of the Franks, asking for a map trade, to better know what his enemy knew of the world, and even got some gold out of it, decreasing some of their ability to fight back. Showing the Franks their map was a fair trade for that.
"Thanks, Clovis. Oh, BTW, I'm declaring war on you. Later!" And he left before the Franks could respond.
His next stop was Kiel, to persuade the Anglo-Saxons to join the war against the Franks. They seemed a bit reluctant to, knowing how weak they still were, but certainly wanted revenge on an enemy that had weakened them so much a hundred years ago. In the end, it cost the Vandals a pretty penny to convince the Anglo-Saxons to go to war, but it would be well worth it.
While asking his advisor about foreign diplomacy, he noted that the Huns were in an alliance with the Western Romans against the Sassanids, even though he didn't know the Western Romans and Sassanids were actually at war, which he found sort of odd.
The army celebrated upon hearing news of the war, and the large portion of it that was based in Panormus immediately went West, and camped on a hill just to the Southeast of Marseilles. In two years, they would attack it. In the meantime, a Pillager unit went out to kill some Frankish Warlords on a hill to the West. After killing them, they were somewhat dismayed to find more Frankish Pillagers to the West, just one of many Franks that for some reason were in the hilly region between Eastern Francia and Northern Rome.
Said Pillagers fought in 483, with the Franks easily defeating the weakened Vandals.
Later that year, the Eastern Romans joined their Western brethren and the Huns in fighting the Sassanids. This could be quite a big war- Eastern Rome and the Sassanids are very powerful, and right next door to each other. At the very least, the Sassanids would probably take the Eastern Romans' isolated city of Nisibis.
In 484, a unit of Warlords set out to avenge the Pillagers that had died a year earlier. As with the last battles, the attacking Vandal Warlords easily defeated the defending Frank Pillagers. Barbarians don't know much about defense, and the defenders were already weakened. The victory of these powerful Warlords has been the first victory from one, and first victory in the war against the Franks that wasn't closely followed by a loss. It would be celebrated for years to come in the Vandal Golden Age.
To the north, this victory was a powerful motivator for the army about to attack Marseilles, and motivation served them well. The Vandals suffered no casualties destroying the 4 Spearmen units defending Marseilles with a Pillager unit and 3 Warlord units. The battle ended with the city engulfed in flames, and a Vandal Victory.
After the battle, the Heavy Cavalry that were with the army rode West to fight the assorted Franks in the area. The Franks didn't know much about how to fight Cavalry- they didn't have a source of Horses anywhere in their empire, so most Franks had never even seen a Horse, let alone fought against one. When faced with the somewhat terrifying onslaught of Vandal Cavalry, they were crushed. A Warlord, Pillager, and Spear unit all died in rapid succession. And yet, this battle was far from over, as there were still many Frankish units in this area, and so the battles in this thickly forested area would continue for many more years.
In 485, the Franks counter-attacked the Cavalry with a force of 5 units- 2 Raiders, 1 Marauder, 1 Pillager, and 1 Warlord. After taking a moment to laugh at the outdatedness of the Frankish army, the Cavalry prepared for battle. The Marauders led the way- and ended up as the only Frankish unit completely destroyed that year. The 2 Raiders worked together surprisingly well, and despite being weak and outdated, one managed to force a unit of Cavalry to retreat, and the other managed to kill it. Strength in numbers, then. The Pillagers and Warlords managed to do the same, with the Pillagers forcing the Cavalry to retreat and the Warlords killing them. At the end of the day, the Franks had lost a unit of Marauders, while the Vandals had lost 2 units of Heavy Cavalry and a third was badly wounded and would have to retreat. The Franks seemed victorious here, but now all of their military was in easy reach of Vandal Pillagers and Warlords.
At the end of the year, the scientists finished work on an idea that there was one god instead of hundreds. It was pretty much the least useful idea they ever came up with.
The first thing that happened in 486 was the building of the city of New Hippo Regius, on the ruins that used to be Marseilles.
With it and the road going through it rebuilt, the Vandal army could easily strike out against the Franks. First, the Easternmost Frankish units, some Spearmen and Raiders, were wiped out by a Vandal Warlord unit and Pillager unit respectively. The Pillagers even took some of the defeated Franks captive. They would now work as workers for the Vandals. Now, the Warlords in New Hippo Regius went to fight. First, they went to fight their most threatening opponent, the only unit of Frankish Warlords in the area. They were a piece of cake. Next, the Pillagers. The forests to the west of New Hippo saw 2 Vandal Warlord units battle 2 Frankish Pillager units, with an easy victory for the Vandal Warlords. They took their defeated foes captive, and, rather than make them work, gave them old swords and made them fight as Marauders. This was a good idea, as the new enslaved Marauders quickly destroyed another 2 units of Frankish Pillagers. They must have not liked the Frank Army much. Finally, a Vandal Warlord unit walked into a Frankish Raider unit, which instantly died, and the battles of 486 were over... but the fighting would soon begin again. The Franks were down 8 units, and the Vandals took no casualties at all. Better yet, they'd gained some workers and 2 new Marauder units.
The Forest Battles of 487 were comparatively, much smaller. The Franks could only muster 3 units of Pillagers to counter-attack. But this was still better than nothing, and they managed to wipe out a unit of Pillagers and Warlords, as well as one of the enslaved Marauder units.
The Vandals resumed their offense in 488. A Warlord killed a Warlord, 2 more killed 2 Pillagers, a unit of Cavalry killed a unit of Pillagers, and the other enslaved Marauder unit attacked some Pillagers and found themselves missing their heads. Well, those guys were certainly useful. A bit after, a Warlord unit captured some undefended workers from a Vandal unit the Frankish Pillagers had taken prisoner, and that was all the Vandal army could do that year.
The Franks decided to try a different tactic in 489- they went to the Vandals with a peace offering.
While it was nice that the Franks were so quick to recognize Vandal superiority, the Vandals decided that they must remain at war with the Franks at least until they completed their primary objective of gaining control of those Roman Roads, and possibly longer if the Anglo-Saxon alliance was still going strong. The envoy was refused.
The Franks, though somewhat disappointed, went on to keep fighting well that year. The Vandal Cavalry were knocked off their high horses by Frankish Pillagers, and some Frankish Warlords defeated the Vandal Warlords on the Iron Hill near New Hippo Regius and captured the workers that had been building a road there, and enslaved the defeated Warlords as Marauders.
Obviously, the Vandals weren't going to let the Franks control Iron Hill very long, so in 490, they quickly sent 2 units of Warlords to defeat the Warlords and enslaved Marauders there. It was an easy victory, although the workers would, sadly, escape to Besancon. For now.
A while ago, the Franks had curiously sent some Pillagers and Spearmen to the east- 2 units of Spearmen and 2 units of Pillagers, to be exact. Those Spearmen and Pillagers were now heading west into Vandal territory in two separate groups, and would obviously have to be destroyed. The first group had now moved far enough West for a Warlord unit in Rusicade to reach them by road, and so they did. The Spearmen were sent to fight first, with the Pillagers hoping that they would be protected by them, at least for a while longer. Ironically, the opposite happened. After defeating the Spearmen with little effort, the Warlords gave them Swords and instructed the new Marauders to fight the Pillagers they used to be defending. They happily obliged, and killed the Pillagers easily. Apparently, they liked swords better than spears.
It was around this time that the Vandals realized that their trade route to Rome was dependent on the Visigoths not declaring war, as every route to Rome still went through either Frankish or Visigoth territory. They decided to lower that threat. First, they established an embassy in Alarichsbaurg, Visigothia...
Then they went to talk diplomacy. They were dismayed to find out that the costs of actually getting the Visigoths to declare war on the Franks were too high to work, but they could at least get them to agree to a Right of Passage between the Visigoths and Vandals to make them more friendly, and with a slight payment that would only continue if they weren't at war with each other. They even threw in a map trade to see if they'd finally built some roads so that the Vandals had an eastern route to the East that didn't go through the Romans, and they were pleased to find out that there was roads there now.
Back in the western forest, the battles continued in 491. The Franks suffered a rather embarrassing loss when one of their Warlord units charged headlong into a unit of Vandal Pillagers- and not only lost, but were enslaved by the Pillagers. The Vandals thanked the Franks for the free workers. A bit after, though, some Frankish Marauders killed a unit of Vandal Warlords, showing that they weren't totally incompetent.
Elsewhere, the first word of the Franks also fighting the Anglo-Saxons reached Vandal ears. They razed the city of Nottingham that year, which, considering it was mostly surrounded by Frankish cities, was unsurprising.
492 saw the continuation of random battles in the Forest, but not much, as the Franks were running out of military units and the Vandals were healing. The battles were getting closer to Cologne and Besancon, though, and farther from New Hippo Regius. This year, a unit of Warlords from both civilizations did battle, with the Vandals winning. They then suffered a loss even more embarrassing than the Franks' Warlord loss to a Pillager the year prior, when they found a unit of their Warlords defeated by Marauders. Declaring vengeance, a Cavalry unit killed these Marauders.
For the first year since the war began, there were no battles fought in 493. The Franks had just run out of soldiers to attack with.
The scientists declared their work finished on another technology at the end of the year, of a great Military Strategy that could be used to build an Academy to teach great generals to lead massive armies- as soon as they could find a suitable teacher, that is.
A little after this, the Eastern Roman city of Thessalonika finished work on St. Peter's Basilica, the last wonder to be complete, which would make their Churches better, being basically a really big one.
No more advances in the west could occur in 494, although the other Spearmen and Pillagers in the east had reached the gates of Rusicade, meaning it was now time to kill them. Marauders went to fight the Spears, Warlords went to fight the Pillagers, and... yeah, it was a pretty easy Vandal victory. Not much the Franks could have really done to win there.
The Visigoths had been, for a while, building a road to the North for some reason. The Vandals moved quickly at around this time to build a road to connect to this one, as it would mean a trade route to the East would only have to go through Ostrogoth territory, rather than both Visigoth and Ostrogoth territory. They got right to work, although the exact details of when the road was started and when it was finished are lost.
495 was rather uneventful, aside from the Western Romans rudely showing up and demanding a Map and the entire Vandal treasury of 2 gold. The Vandals decided to just give it to them on account of being a tiny demand, but damn, the Romans sure demand a lot from them. One of these days, they'll have to fight back.
496 was even less eventful. Nothing happened at all, in fact. The next notable thing to happen was a Warlord battle between the Vandals and Franks in 497 that ended in Vandal victory. To the north, the Anglo-Saxons burned the Frankish city of Paris. It was good to see that they were now winning, and better yet, if they were numerous enough in the North, they could cut off the southeastern part of the Frankish Empire from the western part, at least to some extent.
Another Warlord battle occurred in 498, this time a Vandal victory. The attacker is usually the victor, it seems.
The Sassanid War was the only thing in the news in 499. First, the Huns got the Anglo-Saxons to declare war on them, a symbolic gesture that amounted to nothing with the Anglo-Saxons thousands of miles away from the Sassanids. But much funnier was that they left the war almost immediately after, which prompted many people to say "What the heck are they thinking?"
Not long after, the Eastern Romans captured Tureng Tepe, a city at the Northern end of the Roman-Sassanid border. Gaiseric finds it amazing that Nisibis remains an Eastern Roman city when the Sassanids have had it surrounded for ages now.
The 6th century began in 500, obviously. The Vandals kicked the new century off by having a unit of Cavalry attack both Besancon and Cologne. The ones that attacked Cologne retreated, but the ones that attacked Besancon did not, and the Besancon garrison is now minus a unit of Spearmen.
They also decided to finally start trading with the Sassanids, probably because they now had a third source of Furs to trade. The two agreed that the Vandals would send Furs, and the Sassanids would send Silks and Spices. They also threw in a tech deal of Fortification from the Vandals and Imperialism from the Sassanids, since the Sassanids wouldn't agree to just the luxury deal. Imperialism was fairly useless to the Vandals, but hey, it was worth a few VP points. And the luxuries were definitely worth it.
In 501, the Anglo-Saxons, apparently deciding that the Franks weren't losing badly enough, decided to bring the Celts into the war.
They were a welcome ally, but Gaiseric hoped they wouldn't take much for themselves. Dividing the spoils of war between two people was more than enough.
The Vandal scientists finished research on Christianity, to join the group of Christian nations, or just the Romans so far. It could help them build some great wonders- if they weren't already in Thessalonika and Constantinople.
They didn't really like it if it couldn't help them win battles, but winning would be easy regardless. The 502 battle of Cologne started with the Vandals bombarding the city with the Trebuchets they'd recently brought there. It weakened 3 of the 4 units of Spearmen defending the city, although one of the Trebuchets missed. Even full strength Spearmen are easy kills for Warlords, but weakened Spearmen are child's play. All were easily destroyed by 4 attacking Warlord units. At the end of the day, the Vandals had 3 captured workers and 2 enslaved Marauder units, and Cologne was a pile of rubble.
This was followed by more good news in 503- the Anglo-Saxons had destroyed Cambrai, a bit to the North. Only Besancon remained in this region known only as "South-Central Germany," and it was not long for this world.
Specifically, it had one more year. In 504, the 3 Spearmen units defending the city were wiped out by 2 attacks from Warlords and one from Cavalry. As with Cologne, the city was a pile of rubble and the Vandals had 3 more workers, although they only had 1 enslaved Marauder this time, not two.
And so, in just 3 years, the Franks had completely lost control of this region. It was a sign that they were nearing the end. They could not last much longer.
And where they died, the Anglo-Saxons and Vandals would fill the void. It was decided that one city should be built in the Besancon-Cologne area, not two, on account of various other placements. So, New Tingis was built a bit to the north of what used to be Cologne shortly after the destruction of Besancon.
Only Tongres remained in the area of roads that the Vandals needed to control. Once it fell, they could end the war- although they wouldn't, since the Anglo-Saxon alliance still remained, and it would be more fun to destroy the Franks anyway. They attacked it for the first time in 506, when a Heavy Cavalry unit defeated one of the garrisons of Spearmen.
The Anglo-Saxons built a new city near the ruins of Cambrai in 507. The Vandals were a little disappointed, as they wanted that spot, but oh well, they did destroy Cambrai after all, they probably deserved it more. And, while their new city claimed the Iron that was there, the Furs in the area were outside their reach and could be easy to get, not that the Vandals were lacking in Furs.
The Battle of Tongres continued and would end in 508. The Trebuchets damaged the Spearmen quite a bit, although one of the units of Warlords misheard their orders and destroyed a road outside the city (I hate misclicks). Although that was an annoyance, and they'd be punished for it, it was ultimately nothing to be worried about- there were a small enough amount of Spearmen in the city- 3- for 2 Warlord units and one Cavalry unit to be enough to kill them all.
The Sassanids decided they badly needed Heavy Cavalry in 509, and decided the best way to get it would be to demand the required technology of Military Training from the Vandals.
Gaiseric was not amused. Why does he always get arrogant demands from people he's selling Furs to? Come on, they're not that bad! What, do the Romans and Persians have a sizable number of people who are members of PETA, or something?
He decided that he couldn't afford to lose the Persian Spices and Silks, so he gave them their stinking technology. He kind of pitied their pathetic military anyway- without either Roman Legions or powerful barbarian units, they were kind of pathetic, even if they were incredibly numerous.
The scientists finished research on Byzantine Ingenuity in 509, which they said would let them build ships with fire cannons and Hospitals. As the Vandals still lacked a coastline or any cities big enough to need a Hospital, this remained fairly useless, to the point that nobody even remembered to make a pictographic record (It sent me to the "The Future" screen and skipped the "This tech was researched" screen, for some reason). They did remember the scientists' "We're in the Future!" statement, though.
However, as they had no more real ideas, and their last several had kind of sucked, Gaiseric decided to completely revoke their funding.
The Vandals continued to forget to take pictures of things in 510, this time the thing they forgot being a new city. Oh no! How would we know anything without pictures? As they say, without pictures, it didn't happen!
Well, anyway, this actually did happen, and they built the city of New Syracuse to the north of New Hippo and New Tingis, to make a grab for those Furs near former Cambrai and current Edington.
They remembered to take a picture the next time they built a city, in 512. It was called New Zucchabar, and it was located between New Hippo and the Roman city of Vindobona. Perhaps it would give them another route to attack the Romans... when the time came.
The Anglo-Saxons got the Celts to declare war on the Sassanids in 513, which was even more pointless than the Anglo-Saxons and Sassanids being at war, seeing as how the Celts and Sassanids were pretty much on opposite sides of the known world- and the Celts were mostly on a couple of islands.
The same year, they also captured the formerly-large-but-whipped-to-death city of Tournai from the Franks. The Franks were running out of semi-important cities.
The Vandals built New Cartennae on the ruins of Tongres in 514, reconnecting the road and finishing the reason that they'd started the war in the first place- a road to Rome that didn't go through Visigoth territory.
And the war was close to over now. The alliance was almost up, but as there was still 8 years left on it, they decided to finish what they started and erase the Franks from the map. 4 Heavy Cavalry units were within range of the capital that year, and they attacked Dispargum. As usual, they easily defeated the poorly-defending Frankish Spearmen. 4 units of them in total died, although they managed to wound the Heavy Cavalry a bit. They'd need some more Cavalry to show up to take the city- and luckily, they had more that would arrive soon.
One of the last battles of the Frank War took place in 515, when some Frankish Raiders met a quick doom at the hands of Anglo-Saxon Warlords. The Vandals briefly wondered why the Franks still had Raiders, but then noticed that when Cambrai had fallen a decade prior, the Franks had lost their source of Iron- they couldn't field any soldiers better than Raiders any more.
On the field of diplomacy, the Anglo-Saxons made peace with the Sassanids, ending that pointless war, although the Vandals found it strange that they did that just after convincing the Celts to join. It seemed like this war was just a silly thing to pass around, from the Huns to the Saxons to the Celts.
The Celts also convinced the Huns to declare war on the Franks, which was completely meaningless. They were too far away to do anything, and the Franks would die soon anyway.
The Franks were almost sure they were doomed in 516. Even so, they still fought. King Clovis himself lead the mighty Spearmen of Dispargum into battle. His presence was fairly large, and the Franks even managed to repel one charge of the Vandal Cavalry. But then one of their two remaining Spearmen units fell to the last Vandal Cavalry unit that still had all of its strength.
The Vandals were a bit cautious here. Should they use their wounded Cavalry units to attack the half-strength remaining Spear unit, or should they retreat? They went with attacking in the end, thinking they could win. Perhaps this caught the Franks off guard, or perhaps they never could win anyway. Whatever the case, they lost here. Clovis led well, and fought hard against the Cavalry, bringing many of them down with his Spear and one of the few Iron Axes the Franks still had, but it would not help. He died in the battle. Dispargum had fallen. The Vandals briefly considered keeping it, but decided it was too far away from them to be of value, not strategically important, and just a pain if there was ever a war with the Anglo-Saxons. They burnt the city to the ground. The Anglo-Saxons could have the location if they really wanted it.
The remaining Franks were at a loss. They had 3 cities left, no government, their capital had been destroyed- and they probably all would be, too. They couldn't do anything at all- and so they simply collapsed. All their cities vanished. The war was over, the Franks had been destroyed, and the Vandals had won.
The now Anglo-Saxon city of Tournai had a unique position now, of being the only Frankish city that hadn't been destroyed by somebody. The Vandals had destroyed most of them with reckless abandon. Perhaps that's how their name became synonymous for destroying things, or perhaps their later wars were responsible for that.
With the Franks dead, they'd move on to their next target. Originally, the Visigoths were to be targeted around this time for being in the way- but there was no time for that. The Romans were growing too strong. They'd have to strike, now. And they'd need help- they'd get the help of everyone they could. Some could be helpful, and others, the Anglo-Saxons and Visigoths, would just absorb the Romans' wrath. But that was better than nothing. So it was here that the Vandals established embassies with everyone they didn't already have an embassy with. This included the two Romes, since it seemed like a good idea to know your enemy. And a good idea it was- Rome and Constantinople were defended by a huge number of Legions. This would be no easy task.
But the best things in life don't come easy, they say. And the city of Rome is one of those things.
They noticed, upon building these embassies, that the Sassanid war had mostly wound down- only the Celts, the recent joiners, were still at war, and they were way too far away to do any actual fighting. That might be good, or it might be bad.
The Vandals could not strike at Rome now, they would have to build up a bit first. But they couldn't wait too long- they didn't have time for that, and that just wouldn't be much fun, would it?
