duplicated at the local level. A dispute over a pig or a broken fence
can set neighbors at each other’s throats, and because of the
interlocking relationships between the various barons, earls, viscounts
etc., these disputes spread rapidly and can, if unchecked, flare into
open civil war.
The third millennium marked the period of Arendish
expansionism. The Asturians solidified their hold on the west and, in a
surprise move, fortified the southern bank of the Astur River against
the Wacites and the southern edge of the great Arendish Forest
against the Mimbrates, effectively cutting Arendia in two by
extending a band of control from the borders of Ulgoland on the east to the
sea on the west. The Mimbrates and Wacites naturally both declared
war at that point, but the hastily-erected wooden blockhouses of the
Asturians proved to be substantial enough to repel them. In point of
fact, neither of the other Duchies could bring their full forces to bear
on the Asturians since the Wacites were engaged in a war against
Cherek in the northern reaches of Sendaria as a part of their grand
plan to extend their power to the north and the mimbrates were
engaged in their centuries-long dispute with Tolnedra in their
attempt to extend their influence to the south.
The Duke of Asturia then proclaimed himself King of Arendia
(2618) and called upon his fellow Dukes to come to Vo Astur to pay
him homage. It is difficult to determine if this maneuver by the
Duke of Asturia was a clever ploy designed to infuriate the other
two Dukes into a precipitous withdrawal from their foreign wars in
order to attack him or if it was the result of sheer, arrogant stupidity.
One is always tempted to believe the worst of an Arend, but we
must look at the results rather than the appearance.
The war of the three kingdoms followed, lasting for
approximately eleven hundred years. The Wacite and the Mimbrate Dukes
each proclaimed themselves King of Arendia and issued royal
commands similar to that made by the Asturian. Thus there were
three kings in Arendia, all contending.
The Chereks quite naturally took advantage of the preoccupation
of the Wacite Duke and bit off large pieces of northern Sendaria.
Similarly, Tolnedran generals took the opportunity to push seriously
weakened mimbrate forces back beyonct the River Arend,
eliminating for the time the threat of Arendish invasion.
The war of the three kingdoms was one of the darkest periods in
Arendish history. It was a time of alliances broken, of betrayal, of
surprise attack, of assassination and ambush. One example should
serve to illustrate. In 2890 the Asturians and Mimbrates had formed
an alliance against the Wacites, who were dominant at that time. The
expedition into Wacune was highly successful, and the Wacite
nobility was virtually wiped out. In the latter days of the campaign in what
is now south-central Sendaria, the Asturians suddenly turned on
their Mimbrate allies and annihilated them. Thus, with one stroke,
the Asturians had very nearly destroyed Wacune and had wiped out
a major part of the Mimbrate Army. To defend themselves and to
prevent the Asturian Duke from achieving the monarchy, the
Mimbrates immediately formed an alliance with the remnants of the
Wacites and concluded treaties with certain Cherek chieftains and
some of the western clans in Algaria. These freebooters assaulted
Asturia from the seaward and the landward side while the Mimbrates
attacked her southern borders and the Wacites struck from the north.
Asturia quite naturally collapsed and immediately formed an alliance
with Wacune to attack the now-dominant mimbrates.
As a result of constant attrition, the effect not only of the civil war
but also of the ceaseless attacks by Cherek seafarers and Algar
horsemen. the Wacite Duchy was finally so weakened that it was possible
in 2943 for the Asturians to move decisively against their northern
cousins at a time when the Mimbrates were preoccupied by a border
war against Tolnedra. The campaign was short and brutal. Wacune
was crushed, never to rise again. Vo Wacune was torn down, and all
surviving members of the Wacite nobility were sold to Nyissan
slavers, who carried them off to the south.
The savage destruction of Wacune by Asturia shocked the
civilized world, and the weight of sympathy of other nations was firmly
on the side of the Mimbrate Arends. The consolidation made
possible, however, by the elimination of the Wacite nobility and the
absorption of the Wacite serfs into the Asturian feudal system, made
Asturia virtually impregnable for centuries.
* We expanded on the destruction of Vo Wacune at the beginning of Queen of Sorcery and
during Polgara the Sorceress.
It must be candidly admitted, however, that through the closing
centuries of the third millennium and throughout most of the fourth,
it was a basic tenet of Tolnedran policy to maintain the balance of
power between the contending Duchies of Mimbre and Asturia.
From a practical standpoint, it was to the enormous advantage of the
Empire to encourage the friction between the two contending
houses, since a strong and unified Arendia would have made the
development of the Tolnedran Empire an impossibility. It is of
course a truism that the Arendish Knights are one of the most
awesome forces in the west. Had the Arends been united at any time
during the third or fourth millennia, the Empire would never have
been, and the whole history of the west would have changed. The
stalemate between Mimbre and Asturia lasted until 3793 when the
Mimbrates concluded a secret treaty with Tolnedra. In return for
certain military assistance from the Empire (largely the removal of
restrictions upon Cherek freebooters and Algar raiders and the
northward march of a column of ten legions from Tol Vordue toward
Asturia’s southern border) the Mimbrates pledged a limited
allegiance to the Tolnedran Emperor. This opportunity arose when the
continual warfare in Arendia had become a nuisance hindering the
construction of the Great West Road and an interference with
normal commerce.
The four-pronged attack against her so stretched the defensive
capability of the Asturians that their supply of manpower dried up,
and the nation collapsed into that most useless (and most typically
Arendish) defense – the retreat into fortified strongholds. The details
are gloomy and need not be repeated. The results were inevitable.
Asturia fell. Vo Astur was laid waste. The last Duke of Astur fell in
battle, and his family was all but exterminated. Asturia as a
recognizable nation was no more. It was, however, a weakened Mimbrate
Duke who was crowned the first unchallenged King of Arendia, and
the Tolnedran design in the west was complete. Arendia was no
longer a threat.
Although a Mimbrate King sat on the throne at Vo Mimbre, he was
in many respects a puppet-king – albeit a dangerous one. The most
elemental of the rights of sovereignty, that of conducting one’s own
relations with other nations, was severely curtailed by the
provisions of the Treaty of Tol Vordue. Arendish merchants were severely
limited in terms of what commodities and goods they could import
or export, and Tolnedra profited hugely from the arrangement.
The Kings at Vo Mimbre had other problems, however, which
did not give them time to brood about the possible injustices implicit
in their treaty with Tolnedra. Although the cities and strongholds
of the Asturians had been destroyed, the Asturian nobility and
yeomanry remained intact – although greatly diminished. The
nobles simply retreated into the vast reaches of the Arendish Forest,
taking the always-loyal peasantry with them. What they could not
carry off, they burned. Thus the Mimbrate King fell heir to a
smoking wasteland, empty and unpeopled. The fiefdoms granted his
loyal followers became a punishment instead of a reward, since land
without the people to work it is a burden. Whole villages in the
Duchy of the Mimbrates were uprooted and transplanted into the
north to work the holdings of their feudal lords, and their efforts
were largely to no avail since Asturian brigands crept from the
forests by night, burning crops and villages with abandon. It was
also observed that Asturian bowmen routinely used ‘brate
peasants for target-practice. This quite naturally caused the peasants to
avoid the edges of those fields which abutted on the forest, and in
time this grisly game developed in the Asturian bowman a
capability of phenomenal accuracy at unbelievable ranges.
The activities of the Asturian outlaws provided the Emperor at
Tol Honeth with the pretext for the formation of the Kingdom of
Sendaria in the north, which stripped the Arendish King of a little
more than a third of his nation. As the Emperor explained, ‘Sendaria
will close the northern door to these outlaws. You may hunt them
down now without fear that they will escape to the north.’ The King
of the Arends received this with a glum face, since ‘hunting down’
well-armed men in a forest which stretches three hundred leagues in
each direction is rather like hunting down fish in the ocean.