The Maharajah and the Guild of Thieves
A Broken Crescent Chauhan Rajput AAR
This was a very short custom Rajput campaign, where the Chauhans had to control 10 regions and quasi-historically eliminate the Paramara Rajputs and the Ghaznavids on normal difficulty (hard for battles).
Despite the easy level, the campaign started slowly due to the lack of cash flow I wonder what it would be like on the harder levels. On every turn you will get around about 2000 Rajput golden coins, so what with the cost of elephant upkeep (1500 golden coins for one company each year) and the cost of buildings, with resources as they are you can expect a really very slow start. I, therefore, restarted the campaign after doubling the value of all resources. This makes for an even playing field among the various factions, a faster growth for this ultra-short campaign, possibly bigger battles, while keeping other aspects of difficulty at an acceptable level.
In Broken Crescent 2.3.2 the Chauhan Rajputs control the area of Western Rajasthan and have of course elephants, and the Khsatriya warriors (also dismounted) once you get further into the campaign. The Khsatriya warriors are very battleworthy, but of course nothing compares to the elephants, nicely skinned and incredible to watch in action.
At the start of the campaign the Chauhan Rajputs had only two settlements, both of them castles, which pauses already a huge dilemma. With economic development being a major consideration, starting with two castles is only a step up from the Paramara Rajputs, who start with nothing but one castle. Almost certainly some of the many castles in India will have to be turned into towns but with the resource values doubled, it was just about possible to not do that and still keep the elephants. Still you would need to go on the war path quickly and take a town as soon as possible, which turned out extremely hard without autoresolving. Sieges are certainly not easy with infantry that has no armour and melts away on its way to the walls.
Our two and only leaders were Maharajah Prithviraj and Rajah Samar. Their first act was to seal trade rights (and eventually an alliance) with the Mamlakat (Malikate) of Sindh. The trade rights were not such a good idea, as you will see, but the alliance proved a godsend.
Maharajah Prithviraj attacked soon enough Thanesar, the nearest rebel settlement to Dilli (Dheli) the Rajput capital, which was possible to take on autoresolve (extremely hard in actual battle). This provided a launching pad for the Rajput economy. Without wasting much time and while our diplomat was on his way to seal a trade alliance with the Ghurids, so as to put the Ghaznavids in a very tight spot, the Maharajah attacked another rebel settlement in the north, Kannauj, which fell quickly. Yet the Paramera Rajputs wasted no time themselves in launching armies out of their castle in Dhar to take Gwalior, Mumba and Anhilvara. So if you thought the level was too easy, think again. A race for rebel settlements thus ensued between the two Rajput kingdoms, while our diplomat made the best he could under the tight financial circumstances in keeping the Ghaznavids at peace.
As the Maharajah was busy in the north, Rajah Samar took a second army from Ajayameru (Ajmer) to Anhilvara, a very attractively situated town with a port, part of modern Gujrat, surprised the unsuspecting garrison and took it, bringing the two Rajput kingdoms into war.
Rajah Samar moved off straight to the Paramara capital, the castle of Dhar. The Paramara Maharajah Vindhyavarman was alone in the castle, as the Paramara army had moved up to Gwalior, and so Dhar fell easily. Rajah Samar next headed off for Gwalior, the main Paramara centre and the most central settlement in Rajasthan, the new Paramara capital. Rajah Samar left only a token garrison in Dhar and was laying in ambush halfway to Gwalior, when the Paparamara Rajputs, seeing Dhar castle so thinly guarded were lured to send an army to take it. That army fell into the ambush and a glorious battle ensued with the Paramara army strang out in the open and fleeing in great panic. The Paramara army was soundly defeated and retreated back to Gwalior in shreds. This was to prove the downfall of the Paramara Rajputs. They were now outmatched by the Chauhan army and they lost settlement after settlement. Finally, Rajah Samar took Mumba in an epic siege, finally destroying the Paramara faction, one of the victory conditions, and uniting all Rajasthan under the rule of Maharajah Prithviraj. By 1193, the united Rajasthan consisted of 10 provinces so the minimal settlement count needed for another of the victory conditions of the campaign was fulfilled: Ajayameru, Dilli, Thanesar, Kannauj, Anhilvara, Dhar, Kalinjar, Gwalior, Mumba and Somnath, in sequence. The Maharajah, to keep on the safe side, was laying siege on an eleventh settlement, the last remaining Indian rebel settlement of Kutch. The castle of Kutch fell eventually to two Rajput generals who took over - Tukaji the Handsome and Vigraharajah Solanki. Tukaji the Handsome had been married to one of the Royal princesses and was an upcoming general, a force soon to be feared. He was given the task of pacifying Rajasthan from seething rebellions, especially those of the remaining Paramara rebels in the south, through which efforts he gained much military experience. The last remaining Paramara Rajput rebel, Prince Subhatavarman Paramara, was brought to his knees near Mumba. This made Tukaji the Handsome the most renowned general in the Rajput army and he was appointed commander in chief ahead of the forthcoming war with the Ghaznavids. As for Vigraharajah Solanki, he was rewarded by being appointed governor of Anhilwara, a fast growing settlement that would become our major trade centre. Gwalior, being more centrally placed than Dilli, became the new Rajput capital and was governed by a new general named Naravarman Sisodia.
At the same time, the Mamlakat of Sindh had helpfully gone to war with the Ghaznavids.
By 1193 they had taken Multan and Lahore and had divided the Ghaznavids into two separate regions. Elsewhere, the Khwarezmians had taken northern Iran, though southern Iran was being contested between the Abbasids, the Baghdad Caliphate and the Mamlakat of Sindh. In the Holy Lands, the Crusaders had only Tripoli left, under siege, Tartus and Hims. The lands of the Principality of Antioch and most of Anatolia up to Van had been overrun by the Armenians. Despite an appearance by Richard the Lionheart, the three remaining Crusader seetlements eventually fell and by 1197 the spell of resurgent Christianity in the Holy Land had ended. Armenia and the Ayyubids were established as the dominant factions in the eastern world or should we say in the western world?
As the Georgians controlled the Caucasus and had begun expanding northwards, the Armenians turned west and were simultaneously besieging Constantinople, Dorylaeum and Laodicea, all three of which soon fell. The Ghorids had also gone to war with the Ghaznavids, who being down to two settlements signed a truce with the Ghorids in 1194 and became their vassals. Various diplomatic exchanges started between the Ghorids and Sindh, occasionally going to war with each other over who has the right over the Ghaznavids. Eventually the Ghaznavids set their minds on being vassals of Sindh and peace descended in the region. This made it a little bit complicated for the Rajputs, as it turned out this peace would last and as part of Sindh, the Ghaznavids could expect some degree of protection. In any case they survived after a fashion and it would not be so easy diplomatically to destroy them as a faction, while they were vassals of our trusted Sindh allies.
While these open wars were going on, a second war had ensued in the merchant sphere. The trade rights with the Mamlakat of Sindh had proven a bad idea. India, though not the richest part of that world, was richer in resources than Sindh or the Ghorid and Ghaznavid territories. Trade rights made those riches attractive to foreign merchants, who began to pour in relentlessly. Just in one year, in 1195, four Sindhi merchants turned up simultaneously around Dilli, with more trickling in as the year went buy and that was just the Sindhi merchants. Moreover, foreign merchants more than often seemed better than our own merchants and chased them down from the greatest of distances with incredible speed. With the fog of war on, it became practically impossible to keep an eye on them with our spies. They acquired merchant after merchant and soon a sighting of a foreign merchant sent our own into a panic race around India and eventually into settlements, to avoid acquisition. The thankless task of stemming this tide fell eventually to the Guild of Thieves and, more exactly, to assassins when they became available, which, however, put a dent into the reputation of our Maharajah. In the meantime, as our only recourse, some of our merchants boarded Admiral Vijaypal's ships and went abroad to seek their fortune in the Persian Gulf.
One of them, Jayavarman Taparia, proved a particularly successful silk monopolist after landing in Hormuz and successfully acquiring several merchants doing business in south Iran. He became a bastion of our economy at a time when the conquered settlements of India were being developed to help produce the armies that would have to take the war not only to the Ghaznavids but potentially to their much more powerful masters, the Mamlakat of Sindh.
Peace had now descended upon Rajasthan, and following his many crucial victories, Rajah Samar had acquired a concubine, in addition obviously to his very many wives. Not everyone was happy with her presence but who really could put a blame to the faction heir for increasing his exploits in that sphere which might guarantee the continuation of his now powerful royal family?
There was only one aspect that was not peaceful: the lives of the Rajput merchants. Not only were our merchants in the north in constant threat from foreign merchants, even our men from the Thieves' Guild did not always have an easy life, with several assassins dying in action during their efforts to stem the foreign merchant tide. Just as bad, our Maharajah acquired the nickname Prithviraj the Killer, because of his sponsorship of the Guild of Thieves and its constant efforts to hold back the flood of Sindhi, Ghaznavid and Ghorid merchants. These men were not so much interested in our resources as in putting our own merchants out of business. And that was not the only care of our assassins. While Hinduism had no means of spreading its religion with priests, the Guild of Thieves had to take over that sector too, to protect the old customs from new preachers.
One of the assassins, Prithviraj of Mewar, had to cut so many throats, he acquired the nickname Prithviraj the Killer - no relation to his namesake, our Maharajah - in this case at least with reason. So this reign of fear bizarrely helped guard the peace of the Rajput kingdom. Yet the people of Rajasthan rightly wondered when were we going to get our Hindu priests - but the fear of the Maharajah put out any thoughts of voicing those views openly.
Exasperated and having gained much physical strength and stamina from running around daily for their lives, many a merchant boarded the ships of Admiral Vijaypal and sailed through pirate infested seas to foreign lands. The merchants and their companions had to subsist for months in a diet of fish and, when fish could not be found, even had to diet on the flesh of seals, dolphins and turtles, if the sailors chanced to catch them - not perhaps the diet a good and devout Hindu would like to subsist on. Some, moved by rumours of strange animals, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros and the monoceros, travelled to Ethiopia but found little of commercial value in those beasts, if they could find the beasts at all. Rather our merchants could make a better trade in all kinds of spices, silks, ivory and sometimes emerald stone from Ethiopia, that the Rajahs of India like to wear on their crowns. They do not call those lands to the west the silk road for nothing.