NORTHANHYMBRE

Northanhymbre have the Power of Ceremony.

National bonuses

• Hydraulic Empire : Can build 7 Farms instead of 5 per city, gain +2 Wealth per Farm.
• Golden Age : Start with a Granary; receive Granary upgrades for free. +10% Food Commerce Limit.
• Cultural Patrimony :Wonders cost 25% less, can be built an age early, and you may build two per City.

Units and structures

UU gallery:

<some pictures with links, 96px all>

Structures:

<some pictures with links, 61px all>

Wonders:

<some pictures with links, 61px all>

Leaders

Ælla;Osberht; Guthfrid; Ivar Ivarson; Halfdan; Æthelstan; Eric; Eadred

Settlements

History

Northumbria was an Anglian kingdom of the Heptarchy period, covering a large area of what is now northern England and southern Scotland. At its peak, it extended from the Rivers Humber and Mersey in the south to the Firth of Forth and the northern shores of the Solway Firth in the north.

From Kynaz to Tsar

The Kingdom of Northumbria was formed by the union of the kingdoms of Bernicia (north of the River Tees) and Deira (south of the Tees, roughly corresponding with the county of Yorkshire). Berniccia was traditionally founded by the Anglian chieftain Ida who seized the coastal strong point of Bamburgh in AD 547, and from that point conquered what is now modern Northumberland. More recent scholarship suggests that Bernicia developed as a Celtic-Anglian kingdom, with centres of kingship at Bamburgh, Yeavering and Millfield. At its peak, it extended from the Rivers Humber and Mersey in the south to the Firth of Forth and the northern shores of the Solway Firth in the north.

The Time of Troubles

The kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira were united under Aethelfrith of Bernicia in 604; he was killed in battle in 616 and replaced by Edwin, the son of a former king of Deira. He converted to Christianity and became the most powerful ruler in Britain, expanding Northumbrian territory by conquering the Isle of Man and parts of north Wales; however, his enemies combined against him and he was killed in 633. Edwin's death led to a period of warfare and fragmentation of the kingdom, but it was reunited after 634 under the exiled Bernician noble Oswald, who, backed by troops of the Irish kingdom of Dalriada (where he had lived in exile), defeated the Welsh king Cadwallon at the Battle of Heavenfield, near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, in 634. Before the battle, Oswald raised a cross and with his soldiers prayed for victory. Oswald was himself killed in battle in 642 by Penda of Mercia. Penda attacked Northumbria in 655, but was defeated by the Northumbrian king Oswiu. Oswiu's son Ecgfrith attempted to extend Northumbrian power into Pictland (eastern Scotland) but was killed in battle in 685; from that point Northumbrian political supremacy waned rapidly. The kingdom was damaged by Viking attacks and in the ninth century by the formation of the Viking Kingdom of York in Deira. In the resurgent English kingdom that gradually overcame Viking power, Northumbria was reduced to the status of an earldom, while growing Scottish power deprived it of its northern territories. The Northumbrian-Scottish border was settled on the River Tweed in 1028.

Oswald invited Celtic monks from Iona under Aidan to form a monastery on Holy Island (Lindisfarne); between 650 and 750 Northumbrian monasticism was an intellectual beacon in northern Europe.

Attack of the Vikings: Northanhymbre and the Great Heathen Army

The late eighth century and early ninth century was a time of action, land-grabs, conquest and raiding parties. In Northern Europe, the Vikings had set their sights on the British Isles, keen to embark on successful naval expeditions in search of territory, wealth and prestige. The Vikings had become a dominating military and naval force and in 793 a group of Norwegian Vikings attacked the famous abbey at Lindisfarne. This was to be the first of many raids which were launched against Britain in the following centuries, with Norse raiding parties attacking areas in Scotland, the Shetlands, Orkneys, Hebrides, Isle of Man and Ireland. The Danes focused their attention on Mercia as well as the kingdom of Wessex, thus necessitating a plan of action from Alfred the Great.

In 865 the Viking raids took on a new dimension, with the armies combining and landing in East Anglia with the ambition of conquering the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The two formidable brothers Halfdan and Ivar the Boneless as well as Viking warlord Guthrum, headed the coalition of forces known as the Great Heathen Army. The Vikings proved successful in their mission, the Great Heathen Army managing to drive out the Mercian king Burgred, forcing him to flee and appointing the Mercian Ceolwulf II as king instead. In doing so, they demanded oaths of loyalty to the Vikings.

In the meantime, Halfdan took his men north to Northumbria, whilst Ceolwulf was installed to preside over the western kingdom. Guthrum however had his sights set on the territory belonging to Alfred the Great, focusing his attention on acquiring Wessex.

In order to enact his plan, he initiated an expedition, sailing around Poole Harbour and then combining his forces to invade the area. Whilst Alfred attempted to broker peace, Guthrum remained undeterred and launched a surprise attack on Alfred and his Anglo-Saxon kingdom on 6th January 878 whilst they celebrated Epiphany. The invasion forced Alfred to flee, taking shelter on the Somerset Levels whilst at the same time gathering together forces in order to wage war with Guthrum once more, culminating in the Battle of Edington.

The Kingdom of Jorvik

Ragnar Lothbrok, Erik Bloodaxe and Harald Hardrada are a trio of legendary Viking warriors. Towards the end of their careers, each man sailed his longships upriver to Jorvik, or York. Not one of them survived to make the journey home.

The first to die was Ragnar Lothbrok (or Shaggy Breeches). The verdict is still out on whether there really was a historical Ragnar, but the lurid account of his death was enough to put York on the map as far as the Viking Sagas were concerned.

Ragnar’s time was up when he was shipwrecked off the Yorkshire coast and fell into the hands of King Aella of Northumbria. Aella was a full-blooded historical figure whose rule of northern England was attested by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. But he ruled a kingdom that was politically unstable: for several generations, it had suffered from Viking raids, starting back in 793 when the longships swooped down on Holy Island (Lindisfarne) the spiritual powerhouse of Northumbria.

So the king was in no mood to offer hospitality to any stranded Vikings and when Ragnar refused to give his name, Aella threw him into that most unlikely of Yorkshire settings – a pit full of snakes.  If we can believe the sagas, this wasn’t Ragnar’s first encounter with a serpent either. Stories have him fighting a dragon as a young man, and surviving only because he boiled his clothing in pitch beforehand. How lucky then that he was still wearing the same protective clothing and King Aelle’s snakes proved powerless against him! But the magic left as soon as Ragnar was stripped of his clothes and the snakes crowded in for the kill. With the venom entering his bloodstream, the dying man then made a terrifying prophecy – that his sons would descend on York to avenge their father’s death.

If the saga version of Ragnar’s death is fiction, then the Viking capture of York is undisputed fact.  English sources identify an Ingwar as a leader of the “Great Heathen Army”, but it’s the sagas that take us that tantalising step back to Ragnar himself by identifying this Ingwar as one of the sons of Hairy Breeches himself – Ivar the Boneless. York fell to the Vikings in 866 and King Aella himself died six months later in an unsuccessful attempt to retake the city. The Saga tradition, however, begs to differ and has the Northumbrian King taken alive for the son of Ragnar to torture him to the Viking version of death by a thousand cuts. According to historian Roberta Frank, however, the notorious “blood eagle” is actually a sensationalist misreading of Viking poems gloating on the birds of prey picking over the defeated Aella’s corpse.

In the end, how King Aella died is irrelevant. With the native line of kings gone, the family of Ingwar/Ivar the Boneless ruled York for the next half-century until they too were supplanted by a new King arrived from Scandinavia. This was Erik Bloodaxe, who had earned his moniker from the ruthless elimination of the four brothers who stood between him and the throne of Norway. The political turmoil in Norway eventually forced Erik to find a new kingdom overseas. Not all historians are convinced that Erik actually washed up in York and, such is the paucity of the sources, it is more than possible that the king of that name striking coins in the 940s was someone other than Bloodaxe. The Sagas, however, were in no doubt and immortalised him sitting in his royal hall in a rain-soaked Jorvik with his wife, the equally ruthless Queen Gunnhild, at his side.

Erik did not have a peaceful time in York. The displaced Ivarrsons were never far away and both Scandinavian rivals were now under threat from a third challenger coming up from the south. King Eadred, grandson of Alfred the Great, was close enough to cast a long shadow over Northumbria itself. Erik was an obstacle to the unification of England and when he fell victim to the snake pit of Northumbrian politics – ambushed and killed by local rivals in the Pennines in 954 – King Eadred locked the kingdom of York into the new kingdom of England.

ame atPoltava in 1709, when Peter's new army managed to turn back the invading Swedes. Russia made several further territorial gains by the end of the war. Peter also worked on internal reforms and modernised the Russian army along European standards amd also began the construction of St Petersburg, one of the greatest cities in Russia.

Upon his death in 1725, a series of successions followed — Peter the Great had left no clear idea as to who was to succeed him after his death. It was in 1762 that stability and strong leadership was again brought to Russia with Catherine II (Catherine the Great). She began an aggressive expansionist policy that brought large territorial gains for Imperial Russia. After several Russian campaigns against the Turks, Frederick the Great of Prussia brought up the Polish question to divert further Russian expansion in the Balkans against the Turks. Russia actively participated in the first and second partitions (dismantling) of Poland, gaining large chunks of land as a result. Catherine continued the modernising and social reforms of Peter the Great, and was herself a skilled diplomat. During the end of her reign however, the populous ideals of the French revolution caused her to become increasingly defensive and conservative in her policies, and many of the liberal reforms she instituted early in her career were reversed and again the peasantry grew further towards distress. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with a force of over half a million men. Marshal Kutukov of the Russian forces knew he could not defeat Napoleon's massive army head on. So he conducted a defensive campaign, raiding the French Forces whenever the opportunity presented itself. By the time Napoleon made it to Moscow, he has lost two thirds of his forces, and found the city deserted and devoid of supplies and even shelter. The Russians were still not ready to surrender, and waited for Napoleon to grow tired of waiting in Moscow for peace terms, which never came. Napoleon was forced to withdraw empty handed, unfortunately by then winter began to set in. His already withered forces were forced to endure a long match through a vast land battered by the Russian winter, and pursued by the Russian forces. By the time they returned to France, only 10,000 troops remained. Ironically, Russia emerged as more powerful and respected as a result of this invasion then she had been previously been, but there were storm clouds hovering on the horizon.

Decline of the Tsardom

"What is going to happen to me and all of Russia?"

— Tsar Nicholas II Romanovich

The Russian crown since the time of Ivan the Terrible enjoyed near autocratic rule over the nobility, largely at the expense of the ordinary peasantry. By the mid-19th century, this form of control over the people was no longer tolerable. Despite repeated military successes agains the Turks and the Persians, as well as the successful deterrence of further British progression into central Asia, conditions in Russia for the common peasant was so poor that political unrest began to build up. In 1825, a palace coup by some 3,000 soldiers was brutually put down. Next was a popular uprising in Poland, which again was thoroughly routed. Meanwhile, the tsarist government vaccilated between liberal reform and repression, all to no effect, although serfdom was finally abolished by the Emancipation Act of 1861 but this in turn merely crippled the country's growth further by destroying the sole source of effective labour in all Russia. Terrorism as well as anti-Semitic pogroms and persecution increased in intensity and sanguinity - the tsar Alexander II was killed by a bomb planted by anarchists in 1881.

Fall of the Empire

Prior to his death, Alexander II had been planning to convert Russia to a constutional monarchy, but his assassination ended any chances of reform - the last tsars to follow him all strengthened autocratic rule and repression further in an attempt to protect themselves, but to no avail. By 1868, a new nation, Japan was looming on the horizon in the north Pacific. Territorial ambitions bred tensions which led to overt military conflict, which resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1906, forcing Russia to cede Manchuria and part of the strategically located island to Sakhalin. A decade later, the Russians were drawn into the First World War, and again found itself unprepared in many aspects for modern warfare. Despite the Russian tsar personally joining the fight with his men against Austria and Germany in Poland, Russia continued to suffer defeat after defeat and the reactionary government eventually led the long-suffering people of Russia to finally revolt in 1917, resulting in the fall of the tsardom and the death of the tsar and his family, along with civil war throughout Russia between a variety of pro-tsarist, republican, communist, and anarchist factions as well as intervening expeditions sent by the foreign power

References

1. Historic UK :-
   • Brain J, "The Five Boroughs Of Danelaw", 
   • Hilder M, "Vikings of York"