The Fisherman and the Hunter -
The Battle of Agiastirio and the Death of the Lyran Imperial Navy
by Capitaine de frégate Valentin Brault
Article from
Le Spectateur militaire.
On the morning of September 18th, 1391, prince and admiral Theron Palmeiro defied a pope and sailed with a hundred ships to conquer the Lyran Empire. Boniface the Ninth, in a papal bull issued the previous year, had forbidden further Atlantean expeditions against Lyra's island empire. In exchange, the Lyran king donated large tracts of land, fifty tons of silver, and a hundred tons of orichalcum to Boniface IX and the Catholic Church. Boniface's edict, purchased with Lyran treasure, temporarily frustrated the Atlantean hopes of reuniting their island continent under the control of the Cosimas Dynasty in Cleito, but the frustrations were short-lived.
The Lyran Wars
The conflict between Lyra and Atlantis was the fruit of seeds sown fourteen centuries before by the Roman Empire. At the end of the 1st Century BC Lyra and northeastern Atlantis were overtaken by the expansion of the Roman Empire, at the end of a time known as the Atlantean Dark Ages. Once one of the great maritime empires of the ancient world, Atlantis had declined by 1200 BC. The Romans, coming to Atlantis and Lyra, thought the Greek-speaking peoples of the region were poorer and more backwards than even the provinces of Britannia. However, the Romans found the copper mines lucrative, and climate of northeastern Atlantis was ideal for growing grain nearly year-round, provided sufficient rain or irrigation was available. An independent Atlantean kingdom nevertheless remained in the Cleito Province, reviving Greek culture in the Antiroman Renaissance.
Following the fall of Rome, Lyran kings adopted the title 'Imperator' and cast themselves in history as a successor state of the Roman Empire, much in the same light that the Byzantine Empire is seen today. Lyra's kings claimed jurisdiction over all Roman territories within reach, and used Roman symbolism, such as the Imperial Eagles, until the 11th Century. By contrast, the mainlanders saw the entire island continent as the domain of the Greek-derived people, and sought to unite the region under the control of Cleito. The Lyran Empire was thus always regarded as little more than a rebel state. Although the Atlanteans were distracted by a long series of wars with the Visigoths, who invaded after the fall of the Roman Empire, in 934 AD, 1062 AD, and again in 1194 AD, the Atlanteans launched major expeditions to conquer Lyra and end the perceived civil war. In 1194 AD, the Atlantean general Brencis captured much of Lyra, and Atlantean colonists began arriving in Lyra to incorporate the island back into the larger empire. However, by 1232, the Lyrans had again assumed control of the entire island.
As a result of these expeditions, many Lyrans thought of themselves as Atlanteans first and Lyrans second. Lyran-born Atlanteans, occasionally known as Lanteans or Lantaroii, proved to be a fast-growing and dynamic minority, while the so-called Lyranards fell into a slow decline. Lyran kings were never able to shake Lantean cultural self-identity, and often stirred up local revolts when they attempted to rule in their own right, rather than merely governors of the island. As both Atlanteans and Lyrans spoke the same language (Atlantean Greek), the Lyran Wars resembled more a nine hundred year civil war, between two competing royal dynasties, one Greco-Atlantean and one Roman-Atlantean. Lantean Lyrans prevented the Lyrans from accepting any alliance with the Visigoths or Moors aimed at Cleito.
By the 14th Century, the Atlanteans had at last driven out or conquered the Visigoths, and assumed a tenuous control over the entire mainland of the island continent. The Atlantean emperors who had long tolerated de facto Lyran self-rule, increasingly disapproved of Lyra's independence, launching punitive expeditions in 1309, 1318, 1323, 1347, 1365, and 1369. These expeditions, while they thrilled the Lanteans, inflamed die-hard Lyranards and encouraged a growing internecine guerrilla war in the Lyran countryside. It became clear to both sides that further collision, on a massive scale, was imminent.
Defense of the Lyran Empire
In 1391, the defense of the Lyran Empire rested on the shoulders of two men. The first was Archbishop Athanas of Illusus, the preeminent member of the Lyran Catholic Church. Athanas was renowned for his venality and depravities: a visiting Italian priest famously commented that the Archbishop held more orgies than masses. Unlike its growth in mainland Atlantis, Catholicism spread quickly in Lyra, to such a degree that by the 1300s, the overwhelming majority of the population looked to Rome for spiritual leadership. A number of pagan groups held out in the mountainous Lyran interior until 1378, when Athanas, newly placed as archbishop, provoked Emperor Leontiois to launch a 'crusade' against the pagans in exchange for substantial loans from the church. Leontiois led an army into the interior and killed over fifty thousand pagans, destroying all records of their religion. So effective was the campaign that it was not until the 1880s that archaeologists found written records of these people.
Among the many pies that Athanas stuck his fingers - always for his own power and profit - in was international politics. In 1384, Athanas convinced Pope Urban VI to make him the archbishop not only of Lyra, but Atlantis as well. This Urban did, but only after Athanas greased the palms of a papal emissary. This gained Athanas a considerable yearly tribute of money from the Catholic church holdings in the mainland, nearly equal to his income from Lyra itself. However, mainland Atlanteans by and large did not share the Lyran adherence to Rome. Atlanteans, at least on the mainland, practiced a Christianity more familiar to the followers of Greek or Russian Orthodoxies. Athanas's acquisition of the Atlantean archbishopric, made unilaterally by Pope Urban in opposition to the Atlanteans' own wishes, gained Athanas more enemies than friends. However, it endeared Athanas to the members of his own power-base - the predominantly Catholic Lyrans - and the Emperor Leontiois. Indeed, the Final Lyran War, launched in 1391 by Theron Palmeiro, was in no small part Atlantis's reply to Athanas' political machinations. It fell to Athanas to carry out the first of the Lyran two-stage defense against the growing Atlantean Empire. Armed with gold and silver from the Lyran bishoprics, Athanas brokered alliances with Atlantean enemies, bought and sold Atlantean spies, and agitated for Rome to raise an army of Catholic 'crusaders' to invade and conquer the island continent.
The second defender of Lyran independence was a more martial figure. Janix Arrantzale, born in 1326 to a family of Illisus fishermen, went to sea at age eight. The Arrantzales, who's surname meant "the fisherman", owned a small fleet of seagoing galleys, and oftentimes brought home more than just fish. By age nineteen, Janix commanded his own ship and sallied repeatedly into the Tauran Sea to raid Atlantean merchant ships and seaside villages. Labeled a pirate by the Atlanteans and a patriot by the Lyrans, Janix spent thirty years in a rough and violent existence on the border of the law. In 1373, Janix and his two sons were captured by Atlantean troops during a raid, and imprisoned in the fortified citadel of Xanthus. Escaping from the prison, Janix broke his hip but evaded pursuing guards. However, the hip set poorly and never entirely healed, leaving Janix nearly crippled for the remainder of his life.
Despite his injury, Arrantzale remained a nigh-legendary figure, such that in English-language studies he is known as the "Lyran Robin Hood." Though he gave half of all his spoils to widows and orphans, his personal affluence rose and by 1380, he owned half as many raiding galleys as the Lyran Navy. In the opinion of the adoring Lyrans, no exploit was too audacious, no legend was unbelievable, and no Atlantean treasure ship was well enough guarded. Yet despite his heroic stature to the Lyran people, Arrantzale rarely inspired the loyalty of his seamen - and more often, their fear. A man of terrific energy, his anger was formidable, and he reportedly once killed a man for taking the prime cut of meat at the table.
In 1386, with tensions rising between Atlantis and Lyra, Emperor Leontiois asked Arrantzale to command the Lyran fleet. Arrantzale held out until he received a substantial barony and title, and the king's promise to marry his youngest daughter to Arrantzale's oldest son. Leontiois, perhaps impressed or intimidated by Arrantzale's reputation and popularity, was forced to reluctantly agree, giving him the relatively small port town of Aufidus as his demense. In the space of two years as naval minister and commander, Arrantzale poured money from the Lyran treasury into construction of new shipyards, large city walls, and slave-worked plantations to feed the new populace. For every pound of silver spent by the treasury, though, Arrantzale spent a pound of his own silver to match. Today, Aufidus is the second city of Lyra, and one of the largest in the Atlantean Empire. Early in 1390, Arrantzale left the construction projects in the hands of his son, and took the Lyran fleet to sea; he did not even deign to inform the king about his intentions. Landing on the island of Greater Aeaea, Arrantzale brazenly bluffed the local king into surrender, and renamed the island Leonis, in honor of his emperor. Moving on to Lesser Aeaea, Arrantzale overwhelmed the small local Atlantean garrison before returning home. Not two months later, he again took the fleet to sea, this time with a thousand embarked soldiers, and successfully invaded the island of Capris. When thirty galleys of the Caprisene navy challenged Arrantzale's fleet of eighteen, the Lyran defeated them in a brilliant battle.
The Hunter
Unlike his archnemesis Janix Arrantzale, Theron Palmeiro was no larger than life figure. Born in 1366, Theron - his name meaning "Hunter" in Atlantean - was illegitimate. His father was Prince Antoipatros of Lyra, the younger brother of Lyran Emperor Leontiois, who carried an embassy to Cleito in 1366. Theron's mother was the sister of Atlantean Emperor Nicomediois III Cosimas, and Theron was raised in the imperial court at Cleito. As an illegitimate son, he was not perceived as a threat to either the Atlantean Cosimas dynasty nor Leontiois's own fledgeling House of Illisus, and well educated. He became a fervent follower of the Atlantean Orthodox Church, and Patriarch Petriois IV of Cleito later remembered him as "a young man with a dull face, but with a blinding gleam of intelligence and ambition in them." At age eighteen, he left the court and spent two years visiting various religious sites around Atlantis, and in 1386 A.D., he returned to the court to marry the seventeen-year-old Princess Demostrate, a marriage arranged by his mother.
As part of his duties as a peripheral and "disposable" member of the Atlantean royal family, Theron was sent overland to Duecalion in 1387 with orders to help Crown Prince Nicomediois IV raise a fleet and subdue the rebel islands of Selini, Charon, and Thanatos. While the heir of the kingdom lived a carefree existence, spending shipbuilding money on wild parties, Theron built a small fleet, hired local seamen, and sailed away to put down the rebellion, leaving the bewildered Nicomediois IV standing on the beach. With only fifteen ships and two thousand men, dubbed "The Korsarios", Theron recaptured the islands. The indomitable Princess Demostrate sailed with the expedition, breaking all the ancient gender roles by commanding a group of archers.
Theron's suprising success in the northwest won him both friends and enemies. Crown Prince Nicomediois IV became the most formidable of these enemies, although the Atlantean Emperor approved of Theron's personal initiative. Patriarch Petriois IV also took a greater interest in Theron, who firmly attached himself to following the Atlantean Orthodox Church.
In 1389, Emperor Nicomediois III sent Theron as his special emissary to the Lyran Empire to demand an end to pirate raids on the Atlantean court, such as the ones carried out by Janix Arrantzale. While in Illisus, Theron met his father for the first time. The meeting was tense but uneventful. The Lyran court refused to acknowledge Theron's ambassadorial status, and by the end of 1389, Theron had returned to the mainland. Emperor Nicomediois III, impressed at his nephew's performance in Lyra, ordered him to organize an expedition and fleet to invade Lyra and reunite it with Atlantis.
Atlantean Preparations and Innovation
In 1380, with Lyran piracy on the rise and led by violent and uncompromising Lyranards such as Janix Arrantzale, the Atlantean Empire took stock of its armaments and began building up for war. Although the Atlantean Emperor Nicomediois III could bring to bear extensive resources from around his empire, Atlantean shipbuilders and military commanders had an often-overlooked innovative advantage.
The island continent of Atlantis long harboured some of the finest shipbuilders of the ancient and medieval world, who learned to build strong and seaworthy ships to cross the long stretches of the Atlantic. While the Lyrans, as an island people, shared this shipbuilding culture, after 1370 the Atlanteans successfully introduced a number of shipbuilding innovations.
Foremost among the new innovations was the carvel-style of hull construction. Atlantean records date this to at least 1384, when the Atlantean Navy ordered six "carvel galleys of the oceanic class." Unlike clinker-built ships, with their overlapping wood planks on the hull, carvel-build ships were stronger, larger, and could carry a more lofty sail-plan than their predecessors, all highly important for voyages out of sight of land. Matched with the new hull construction was a rudder on the sternpost, replacing the oar-like rudders of the ancient peoples.
In 1387, when Theron Palmeiro began building ships for the invasion of Selini, Charon, and Thanatos, he acquired the services of a shipbuilder known to history as Philippoios of Duecalion. The eight galleys Philippoios built for Theron's expedition were carvel built and unusually long and heavy for their time, and rigged on three masts. Although clumsy in the shallows, these sea galleys were highly suitable for the open ocean, and may have carried some of the first gunpowder-fired weapons in Europe, although surviving records are unclear. At least some of the "sea galleys" appeared later in the invasion of Lyra, although they seem to have served as transport ships. However, Philippoios appears to have accompanied Theron to Eridanus, where he built thirty ships of a similar design. Another fifteen were built at ports along the Tauran Sea, and gathered at Xanthus.
These new ships were called "sea galleys" or
pelagioi, but in reality they were anything but the traditional galleys. Long and heavily-built, they had a higher main deck than any galley. Although they still had oars, the pelagioi depended on their sails for propulsion in most cases. Most of the pelagioi built for the invasion of Lyra had three masts, square-rigged on the fore and mainmast, a lateen sail rigged on the mizzenmast, and a sharp prow and bowspirit. Theron's flagship
Azeas, the largest of the pelagioi, had four masts. Naval architects and historians would later call Philippoios' designs a 'proto-galleass' or 'proto-galleon'. By 1391, perhaps half of the Atlantean pelagioi were armed with cannon, in one of the first concerted efforts to bring gunpowder artillery to a naval battle. Although no illustrations and very few accounts remain, it seems plausible that the Atlantean cannon were generally small barrels made of iron or bronze, firing a variety of loose shot, like oversized shotguns. These small weapons were primarily used to sweep enemy decks of men, rather than to damage the ship itself.
A comparison of the Lyran galley and the Atlantean pelagioi.
Invasion 1391
At dawn on September 18th, 1391, Theron's flagship
Azeas signalled the Atlantean fleet to follow them out of the harbor at Xanthus. Following them were dozens of transport ships, including cogs 'hired' from their civilian owners and loaded with Atlantean pikemen and crossbowmen.
Azeas led the armada south through the Tauran Sea until they crossed the Lyra Strait, making landfall east of Illisus. Theron's goal was the port town of Agiastirio, where he expected a warm welcome from the Lantean-dominated population. Agiastirio's name, meaning 'Sanctuary' in ancient Atlantean, was an apt descriptor of the bay, which was deep, enclosed against storms from the sea, and possessed of excellent supplies of fresh water and food.
At Agiastirio, Theron's fleet made contact with sixty-five smaller galleys coming down from Acestus, as well as another group of transports and embarked infantry. Agiastirio's civic leaders met the Atlantean troops as liberators, and Theron quickly ordered the infantrymen unloaded from the transports.
The invasion caught the Lyrans by surprise. Though they had spent years preparing for another Atlantean attack, the Lyrans had become overconfident from Boniface's papal bull demanding an end to Atlantean invasions. To most Roman-oriented Lyranards, it was inconceivable for the Atlanteans to risk papal displeasure through open defiance. They did not recognize that the predominantly Occidental Orthodox Atlanteans cared very little for Papal opinion, particularly with Boniface struggling to solve a major schism with Avignon.
Despite the surprise of the Lyranards, their response was rapid. The Lyran Army, composed of fifteen thousand men, quickly gathered near Illisus, where they prepared to fight off a siege. Like much of the period warfare in Europe, there were few drawn battles in Atlantean or Lyran warfare, but rather a series of sieges. A powerful army, unopposed on the field, would romp around the countryside and besiege walled cities, and, if weakened by lack of supplies or disease, might withdraw before forcing the submission of the city. While cannon started to appear in the armies, its use as a siege weapon remained many years in the future.
Arrantzale, with his growing fleet in Aufidus, quickly sailed. It is a remarkable fact that, despite the relative weakness of the Lyran Empire at this late hour in its history, Arrantzale mustered a hundred and fifteen galleys of various sizes, outnumbering the Atlantean invaders in ships. Along with the galleys, Arrantzale brought twenty of his own merchant ships, older vessels which he intended to send into Agiastirio's harbour as fireships. The Lyranard admiral's hope was that, with their fleet destroyed, the Atlanteans would fall prey to disease and actions by Lyran cavalry. It was no idle hope; the Atlantean incursion of 1323 had suffered just such a fate.
Arriving at Illisus in mid October, Arrantzale received reports from Lyranard spies observing the activity at Agiastirio. Arrantzale was encouraged by the fact that Theron seemed to have taken few precautions, anchoring his warships in three columns inside the bay. This perfectly suited the Lyran plan to send in fireships, setting the clustered Atlantean warships ablaze, then sweeping in to finish off the fleeing remainder. Arrantzale was also encouraged by his numeric advantage, with a hundred and fifteen war galleys to the Atlantean sixty-five.
Battle Royale
Theron, contrary to the rumors he fed Arrantzale's spies, was quite well-prepared for the arrival of the Lyran galleys. The Atlanteans pressed local fishing boats into service, spreading them out in cordons, and reinforced by the fastest galleys. Theron's forty-five powerful pelagioi anchored in a sheltered but shallow anchorage several miles north of Agiastirio's main port, where Lyranard spies had not spotted them. Finally, in the expectation of Lyran fireships, on October 16th, Theron re-deployed his galleys toward the mouth of Agiostirio's port, away from the main anchorage.
Late in the afternoon of October 31st, Theron's cordon of fishing boats began signalling the arrival of Lyran warships. Theron quickly put his own plan into action. In the fading light,
Azeas signalled and the Atlantean fleet followed her stern-lamps into the gloomy night. The pelagioi formed up astern of Azeas, making five columns of nine ships, while the regular Atlantean galleys formed up in a crescent behind them.
The battle formations of the Lyran and Atlantean fleets. Click to enlarge.
With the fall of darkness, a wind from the northeast sprang up and blew steady. This placed Theron's Atlantean fleet upwind from Arrantzale, and frustrated the Lyran's intentions to use fireships against the anchorage. Throughout the clear night, the Atlantean and Lyran fleets maintained their distance, waiting for dawn to begin closing; but the two fleets could see the stern lamps on each others' ships.
As the sun slowly crept up, Theron ordered
Azeas to raise all her banners and turned west to begin the battle. Theron's five divisions of pelagioi followed him towards the Lyran fleet, with the sun rising directly behind them as they closed. Blinded by the light, the Lyran watchmen were unable to count the Atlantean ships, but they remained confident of their numeric advantage. Unlike battles under sail from later eras, both the Atlanteans and Lyrans entered the fight under a cloud of colorful banners - sometimes fifteen or twenty banners on each ship, very few of them standardized. The sails of Lyran ships were dyed with the purple
cross potent.
Theron's main force of pelagioi, formed into their dense column, crashed into the center of the Lyran galley fleet. The Lyran galleys quickly swarmed the outnumbered pelagioi. Counting on their believed superiority of numbers, the Lyran galleys maneuvered madly to attack the larger pelagioi. However, the Atlantean innovations proved to be decisive. The decks of the average pelagioi were sometimes two meters higher than the decks of the Lyran galleys, and the Lyran marines had to scramble up the sides of the pitching ships as Atlantean archers, ensconced on the higher decks and the fighting tops, rained arrows down on the decks with near impunity. Once the Lyrans managed the tough climb onto a pelagioi's deck, they encountered Theron's Korsarios.
The veterans of Theron's island campaigns, the Korsarios now rank as one of the finest naval infantry forces of the medieval age. Although the modern Atlantean Corsairs, their direct descendents, are armed with rifles and machine guns, Theron's Korsarios were trained to fight in armour on the decks of ships. The average Korsario wore a barbute (a close-fitting helmet reminiscent in form and function of the ancient Greek hoplite helmets), greaves, a solid steel breastplate, and a kite shield. Although most Korsarios were armed with short, broad-bladed stabbing swords and short-handled boarding pikes, their signature weapon was the morgenster, a version of the European morningstar. Swung overhand, a Korsario would rain punishing blows down on the heads of their enemies. Fighting together on the deck of a ship, the Korsarios played the role of heavy infantry.
As the Lyran galleys mobbed the pelagioi, the lighter-armoured Lyrans struggled to gain a foothold on the higher decks, only to come into close contact with the Korsarios, backed by the more lightly-armed and armoured Atlantean seamen. According to most accounts, whenever the Lyrans managed to gain their desired foothold, the Korsarios formed into an armoured mass and inexorably advanced, erasing the Lyrans' gains. The pelagioi were not just higher and larger, but their crews were more numerous as well; while a galley might boast over two hundred men, both rowers and marines, the average pelagioi at Agiastirio had nearly three hundred and fifty men. The men of the unengaged pelagioi inside the main column clambered over to their sisterships, where they joined the crews of the engaged ships. The formation of pelagioi soon resembled not a naval battle, but a siege of a single floating wooden castle.
While the fight raged in the center, the rest of the Atlantean galleys, the smaller and older types, advanced in a crescent around the main fight, enveloping the distracted Lyran galleys. When the Lyran galleys realized, belatedly, that they were enveloped, many of the crews panicked and turned their ships to flee. Arrantzale, on his flagship near the center of the melee, was distracted by the fight developing with the Atlantean pelagioi, and did not see either the double envelopment by the Atlantean galleys or the panic around the fringes of his own fleet. As the flanking Atlantean galleys turned inward, they came to the aid of the beleagured pelagioi, ignoring those Lyran galleys that elected to flee.
Surrounded by the Atlantean galleys, and befuddled by the near-impregnable pelagioi and the Korsarios aboard them, some sixty Lyran galleys were trapped, with nowhere to flee. The beleaguered Korsarios aboard the pelagioi, though exhausted by the fighting, pushed down off their higher decks and began boarding the smaller Lyran galleys, already depopulated by the work of the marine crossbowmen. By noon, the Battle of Agiastinio was decided, although the fighting continued well into the heat of the afternoon, as the Atlanteans pushed to overwhelm the last fanatical Lyran resistance.
By the end of the day, the Atlanteans had captured eighty Lyran galleys, and accounted for an estimated six thousand prisoners. An estimated ten thousand Lyran sailors perished in the fighting, and only thirty-five Lyran galleys escaped back to Illisus. Janix Arrantzale was not among them, being captured aboard his flagship. Theron, mindful of Arrantzale's past daring escapes from Atlantean prisons and under strict orders from the Emperor, took no chances, hanging him for piracy. Though Theron dealt brutally with the Lyran admiral, he was far more judicious with the surviving sailors, taking them ashore, restoring many of their personal possessions, treating the wounded, and offering thousands a chance to serve under the Atlantean banner. Many of the Lyran sailors accepted the offer.
Although victorious, the Atlantean forces did not escape unscathed. Although no Atlantean ships were captured, eight galleys and four pelagioi were badly damaged in the fighting, and sank during or shortly after the fighting. An estimated three to four thousand men died, and an untold number of others were injured, many succumbing to their wounds in later days.
Aftermath
The victory at Agiastinio was decisive. Unlike previous punitive expeditions, the Atlanteans had no intent to withdraw, and the port of Agiastinio became their base for all other operations in Lyra. The surviving remnants of the Lyran Navy never again left Illisus; blockaded in, the ships were beached or sunk in the shallow waters of the harbour, moldering away as the Atlantean armies sieged Illisus. The Lyran capital held out until 1396, when its starving citizens stormed the Lyran palace, murdered the still-defiant Emperor Leontiois and his family, and presented their heads to the Atlantean generals.
Theron Palmeiro, the victor of Agiastirio and the planner of the conquest of Lyra, returned to Cleito in 1394, where most gave him a hero's welcome. However, Theron soon became ill, probably from a wound received earlier in the year, and he died in early 1395. His enemies, including Emperor Nicomediois IV Cosimas (1398-1414), attempted to purge his name from history. Although this attempt at rewriting history was ultimately unsuccessful, Theron remains a relatively shadowy figure in Atlantean naval history, and only in modern days have historians and researchers started to uncover more facts about the life of Theron Palmeiro.
By the end of the 15th Century, Lyra was an integral part of the growing Atlantean Empire. The island's naval traditions remain deeply-rooted despite the result of Agiostirio, and even to the present day, Lyra contributes more sailors per capita to the Imperial Atlantean Navy than any other Atlantean province; and many of the key figures of the later naval wars with Spain and Iberia are Lyran natives. While unification was accomplished quickly, Lyran integration took much longer, and the islanders maintain a unique sort of pride in being both
Atlantean and
Lyran
Author: Capitaine de frégate Valentin Brault is head of the Musée national de la Marine's annex at Toulon. An accomplished naval officer, he is one of Europe's foremost experts on medieval naval warfare.