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The European Timeline
1000-1029 (247-276 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) The Frankish Revolution 1029 (276 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) 1031-1066 (278-313 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus)
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The War for the North

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The Ethiopian War

The Frankish Revolution/ The Second Gallic Wars
Beginning:

1029 (276 AD)

End:

1029 (276 AD)

Place:

Aquitania, Francia, Narbonensis

Outcome:

Fall of Aquitania and rise of three Gallic Provinces

Major battles:

Battle of Burdigala, Battle of Masillia

Combatants

The Frankish and the Narbonensians

The Aquitanians

Commanders

Veturius Crassus Camerinus, Mayor of Lutetia (Paris); Lucretius Rufus Coxo, General of Fort Masillia (Marseille); Emperor Jacobus of Rome

Licinus Sulpicius Praetextatus, Governor of Aquitania and Mayor of Burdigala (Bordeaux)

Strength

10,000 then later the whole Rome Army

50,000

Casualties and Losses

2,000 civilians; 3,500 Frankish soldiers and 100 Roman soldiers

25,000 Aquitanian soldiers

The Frankish Minority in the Empire.[]

The Frankish minority in Aquitania was growing throughout the province and began to become upwardly mobile as they moved into the Province. The Authorities in Aquitania, after the potential invasion from Britannia and the conquest of the Scandinavian and other Provinces on the Mare Suebicum, began to relax their racial policies against the Franks. The Franks began to create printing factories as well as making the factories that make the printing presses. The illustrations in the margins of books became a notable feature of Frankish printing and the particularly vibrant colors from specific chemicals found in northern Aquitania. The first assembly line was invented by the Franks but the few people that could be found in the Provinces were not enough to effectively use this technology.

The Franks had a long history of stronger women and greater respect in the public and business world the women in most other provinces had, such as Italia, Greccia, the Parthian Provinces, and Aegyptus certainly. They were allowed to make patents and inventions and keep them for themselves. One of these was the knitting machine which made the price of clothes decrease and the quality greatly expand as well as the varieties of colors from the dye brought from the Northern Part of the Provinces and brought from the Indian Expeditions. The colors available to the regular people were expanded in the Senatorial provinces to include all colors except purple and dark blue which were reserved for the nobility and especially the Emperor.

Despite the ability of the Franks to own businesses they were still refuse the right to enter into elections or vote in them, even though they had been in the province for generations. Some who saw that their children were discriminated against in the schools and many were refused to enter the military except as infantry, to be simply thrown or enslaved by the other military leaders. Some Franks decided to have their names changed to more Roman sounding ones, these were very few as they remember stories of the origin of their name from back when their people lived outside of the Roman Empire, even though this played a small role in their lives it was important and emotional when it came up. These people who changed their named were scorned as integrationists and traitors to their heritage. The Franks, with their lighter hair and bluer eyes, established clubs and organizations for their own freedom and advancement, exactly as the original policies of separation were meant to stop. The focus returned to the power monopoly of Roman and other Southern European colonists in the more Northern Provinces. The elections that occurred were only open to people who inherited that right from their ancestors.

The damage however had been done, in the time between the relaxing and the reinstating of the policy, also fueled by the intensification of rhetoric and Roman pride by the new Emperor Jacobus, inflamed the passions of all people who saw themselves as Romans. The Franks demanded rights, but they did not, however, oppose being part of the Empire they simply felt that they were not, in fact, part of it but simply inside of it.

The Franks, actually, would not have been part of the Province of Aquitania if they had not incorporated their neighboring Provinces into their own. Lugdunensis, Narbonensis, and Beligca had become parts of Aquitania and the Aquitanian majority kept power for themselves and refused self governance to the provinces they had made suzerain states. The subjected people were for the most part ignored so long as they paid their taxes but the Franks were different, they had a different culture and that allowed them to make new contributions to the markets of the Empire and to become a more connected group than the other formerly barbarian troops who came into the Empire slowly, in small numbers, and separately.

Prior Aquitania

Aquitania prior to its expansion in green. Belgica in Blue, Lugdunensis in red and Narbonensis in Yellow

The Frankish Revolution 1029 (276 AD)[]

In the year 1029 (302 AD) this powder keg was lit by a shot in the city of Burdigala (Bordeaux) and the army of the Aquitanians began burning the clubs and meeting places of the Franks. The blow back from the Franks outside of Burdigala was incredibly expensive in damages from the torches on the cities of Aquitania. The nearer provinces decided to take the position of allowing the Emperor to lead the charge against the Franks but Jacobus, being a student of tactics and strategy decided to end the battles in Aquitania as he did on the island of New Cyprus around nineteen years ago.

The Franks in a meeting in Lutetia declared their independence from the Province of Aquitania and sent a petition to Rome in order to be counted as a Senatorial Province and to enjoy the rights of free Roman citizens. The Aquitanians did not allow the petition to reach past their border. Slowly the information about the tragedy occurring in Aquitania, the businesses and communities of the Franks were being systematically destroyed across the Province, spread to other Provinces as refugees arrived, the few there were. The Emperor Jacobus, upon learning of this, saw that his solution ought to be like that used in New Cyprus, one of stopping the fighting and settling terms of Peace between them. A delay came however when Jacobus began to fall ill, he fought the disease as he fought his enemies but it would be months before he would physically go to Aquitania. In his stead was sent his son, Lusitanian Senator and former military commanding general in Lusitania, Decius Zaragonus.

Decius led a campaign first to stop the legions, whose true loyalty ought to be with Rome, who were following the governing class of Aquitania. Many, upon hearing the name Zaragonus which had struck fear in the hearts and minds of the soldier class, immediately joined with Decius. However, some few legions, usually those who mingled with the elites and the philosophers in the entitled class or were themselves from them, remained determined to see that Aquitania not have its autonomy infringed upon. They saw it as the greatest of Provinces and deserved to be self-governing. It was the most productive and the larges in the developed part of the Empire. These reasons did not convince Decius certainly and only encouraged his father to fight sickness more so he could assure his place as Emperor.

Aquitanian Expansion

Aquitania after their expansion

The Loyalties of the Military once again had fallen away from the Emperor and into individual governors or commanders whose personal interests and not the defense of the Empire as the function of an armed forces. Decius, like his father separated the two armies and made it impossible for them to harm each other without being decimated by the still much larger force loyal to the Emperor. The longest river in the Province of Aquitania, the Liger (Loire River), was declared a temporary border between the areas of Aquitania where there was the most destruction, the northern parts of the Province and the relatively unaffected areas of Aquitania, which was the South, with the exception of Burdigala. Decius was declared temporary Governor of the occupied territories of the Franks but was not certain whether to move to reunify the province or give governance to the Franks. The Governor and other politicians of the previous administration who condoned the attacks upon the Franks and their establishments were in exile in the lower parts of the Province but they did not lose any power. That is to say until the Emperor recovered and arrived in the temporary Capital of Burdigala, which had become essentially free of any Franks. They were either killed or left.

The Emperor Jacobus was not himself a Frank but his son had immersed himself into the culture of these people. When Jacobus had arrived in the Province he talked with the Franks that his son had began listening to and was surprised at the level of knowledge these, so called, barbarians had of the philosophies in the Empire. They declared their independence not from Rome, but Aquitania, and bowed before the Emperor. They described how they had only sought to govern based on the idea that all people could be considered equal, something that was inherently opposed to the establishment oligarchy governance of the Province of Aquitania. The Emperor, though not convinced of their ideas, admired their conviction. The Aquitanians also had become a fear of Rome as having the potential to take their army against the Emperor and the other Provinces, which this incident showed they indeed had the capacity to do. The Governor of Aquitania was told that the Provinces of Lugdunensis and Belgica had been declared Francia and would be governed as seen fit by the independent Franks and that the current generals, governor, and oligarchy were to respect the new borders or be exiled to the deserts of Africa. They chose to live, but were quickly run out of office by further developments. The Province of Narbonensis was given its independence by Jacobus as a humbling action against the Aquitanians. The plains of Gallia were now composed of three separate provinces with Francia's capital in Lutetia (Paris), Aquitania's in Burdigala (Bordeaux), and the capital of Narbonensis in Masilia (Marseille).

Francia and Aquitania and narbonensis

Francia in Blue with Lutetia (Paris); Aquitania in Green with Burdigala (Bordeaux); and Narbonensis in Red with Masilia (Marseille).

Class and Ethnicity[]

Aquitania had become a wealthy country, both because of its industrialization from its proximity to Germania and Britannia and its surplus of arable land and immigrant labor. The other Provinces were jealous of the Province which seemed to only be contested with Italia and Rome itself in terms of wealth. The Emperor Carolus spent a lot of time in the Province of Gaul, which was then an undeveloped series of fields and Celtic people. The fame of Carolus and the openness of the area, which people were encouraged to move to and develop, led many immigrant people to move to create new cities. These people of Grecian, Italian, Aegyptian origins as well as the native Gaulish people formed a mixed race of elites that saw themselves as destined to create a new society where they would be the masters, as most of them were of humble origins, the children of farmers or even slaves.

The Franks were a people who looked for the same sort of enfranchisement as the people who became the elites of the country. But they had already solidified power by the time of the arrival of the Franks. The barbarians from Germania were seen as uncivilized and destined to be subjugated by all of the cultures who had formed the oligarchy of the Province, as well as being scornful of the Romans and their wealth. Hence they were not allowed to settle together. Many were used a mules for the military and merchants to transport things, but the control they managed to build up on printing, manufacturing of steel and cast iron in Aquitania, as well as being freed from their transportation use with the Railroad, which many of them were building and operating, were all making the Franks a richer and more well defined people. The relaxing of the policy against their ability to interact with each other after the focus of the elites shifted to defense also crystallized their identity.

Tensions grew as the political power of one group clashed with the economic dynamism of another. That was the analysis that grew out of the actual Revolution of the Franks in the Northern part of the Province. Many Franks were regular working people who united around examples of how prosperous they could become. However some have taken to a nuances view and the effects of these ideas would spread throughout the books and newspapers of the Empire.

Decius was left as governor of Francia and Francia became a sign of Hope and Freedom to Europe. Even more so it became a sign that people were not unable to move up socially and were not unable to effect their government. The ideas that formed in the Province of Francia began to spread as their constitution, filled with language of elections and The People as the sovereign and no nobility, formed a movement among the people who had always been servile to seek more in life. The greatest call for such movement came in the election that followed the Frankish Revolution. Among the issue was the right to vote for people other than the noble blooded, as had been a strong source of tension for the Frankish people.

A further issue that spread in the Empire was the tribes in the provinces began to see themselves as other then subjects to Rome. The first of these developments was, as imagined, in the Germanian and Scandinavian Provinces. Among these groups were the Angles, Saxons, and Cimbri in the Jutland Peninsula and Northern Germania; the Goths in central Europe, the Vandals in Prussia, the Frisians in North West Germania, The Venedi in Scythia, The Lombards in Prutia, and numerous others among them began to form parties of interests for their group in the Assemblies of the Provinces. Many wanted nothing to do with the others but remained consistent in their want to remain with the Government of Rome. They all believed that they would be better off separate but related to the Empire than to be totally alone.

The system of Duchies in the Imperial Province began to develop into concrete border areas within the Provinces and which would report to the Governor or the Emperor. The Count System in Senatorial Provinces was introduced as the Duke in the other parts of the Empire came to be a strong source of power for Jacobus. Some areas with their own system of sub-divisions such as Aegypt and the Nomes, while others like Parthia changed from Satrap to Governor and added Dukes as ordered by the Emperor. These Duchies became places of grouping for specific ethnicities in many cases. The Duchy of Lombardia in Scythia grew to become that general area, The Duchy of Saxonia became a major player in the politics of Germania in Scandinavia and Germania. The Dukes of Vandalia became essentially half of the province between the Vistulus (Vistula) and the Odris (Oder) Rivers. these developments however were not as widespread as the idea of them. Many Governors refused to split their provinces along ethnic lines and many other ethnicities lost their coherence with poor leadership and drop in momentum. {C}The Duchies described above were only the successes, Saxonia, Lombardia and Vandalia. Goths became too dispersed and mixed with Slavic people who had become just as nebulous. The Frisians became more Frankish as the culture of that Province became the dominant presence in the region. Most of the productive areas were now part of Francia. Governors and most importantly the Emperor remained the most powerful force in the Empire and for the time it seemed Jacobus would leave the Empire to a commander and the succession would be peaceful.

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The European Timeline
1000-1029 (247-276 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) The Frankish Revolution 1029 (276 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) 1031-1066 (278-313 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus)
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