In 1945 Stalin ordered his armed forces to invade the West, which dropped a nuclear bomb on Moscow and another on Kiev, forcing the USSR to surrender. Stalin escaped the explosion in a bunker but was later captured and put on trial with Molotov, Beria and the Nazis in Nuremberg, being hanged in 1947.
The Equestrian-Israeli War
After the Roman conquest of Egypt was finalized, Octavian - now Augustus - sought to unify all levels of Roman society under his new system - that of the
Princeps. While the masses could be sated by bread and circuses, the Elites - of both the city of Rome, and in the provinces - proved a tougher nut to crack. Augustus had his loyalists, particularly those higher-born Patricians, but he found support among the Novae-homo, the new self-made men of the Equites class, quite lacking. Here brewed a political class that had, since the days of Sulla, held a grudge towards those they saw as the gatekeepers of Roman aristocracy; while their latent adoration for Octavian's adoptive father held firm for now, he knew that Rome's middle class would not stay restive forever in the face of his aristocratic tendencies.
And so, Augustus sought to give them an avenue into which they may channel their hunger for power and glory, without the risky business of climbing the ladder of aristocracy. The new Judicate of Israel, stretching across a fertile mountain range in the western part of Arabia[1] and centered around the city of Yathrib, had come to amass a great wealth through their strategic location on the Indian spice route, and their own domestic manufacturing of Frankincense and other desirable products. The Kritocracy, ruled by a high judge like the biblical confederacy of yore, reminded the Romans of Carthage to an uncomfortable degree. Augustus had neither the men nor the resources to undertake another long war right after the devastating war against Marc Anthony, but in the restlessness of the Roman Equites he saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Gathering a few willing collaborators, Augustus drew up the first of the 'popular wars' - wars declared by a portion of the Roman population at the assent, but not the command, of the Princeps; funded, manned and led not by the state, but by entrepreneurs and adventurers. The idea was inspired by Crassus' miserable expedition into Parthia, but this time it would be even further detached from the Roman state itself - no legions were formally sent, and no formal declaration of war was ever issued. This gave Augustus plausible deniability as several thousands equites, accompanied by their Plebian clients and mercenaries from all over the Mediterranean, marched southbound from Syria.
At a glance, the campaign seemed easy enough - the Israeli army was not famed for competence or stunning victories, and was then busy waging war in the Judicate's southern border [2]. On the other hand, the Equestrian army - doubly named for its Equite leadership and its massive cavalry - was large, experienced from the 40 years of war that had been waged all across the Mediterranean, and its leaders were highly motivated. Augustus assumed it would be a quick campaign of conquest, not too dissimilar to the humiliation Pompey the great imposed on the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom not too far ago.
This would prove to be one of Augustus' scant few - yet terrible - mistakes, in what would otherwise be a spotless career. Beneath a veneer of professionalism and experience, the army cobbled together by the Equites lacked the strong legionary core that had made the Roman army so feared. Mercenaries from Iberia, Africa and Greece outnumbered the Roman Infantry almost ten-to-one, leading to an unorganized, disjointed mess.
But even worse than the situation on the battlefield was the situation in the command tent. The so-called 'generals' of the conflict were not, in fact, generals, but those with the largest amounts of spare gold to hire mercenaries. Just like old Crassus, they were driven by greed and self-interest; but unlike Crassus, each had to contend with about 10 other people just like him. Arguments abounded, and several times during the campaign the massive army split due to petty ego conflicts.
Meanwhile, the Israeli troops quietly finished their southern campaign, and went to exploit the Equites' follies. The desert had taken its toll on troops used to Mediterranean combat, and soon the various sub-armies found themselves picked off one by one in ambushes, nighttime raids and finally even in pitched battle. The powerful cavalry of the equites quickly became subpar infantry, as supplies quickly ran out and horses began to be seen as better food than battlefield companion. After a year of bitter defeats and pyhrric victories, the last of the Equestrian armies surrendered in the hills outside of Yathrib.
High Judge Ishaq ibn Abadya of Israel, in a decision that would come to define history, did not apply a uniform punishment to the surrendering army. While the leading equites were either executed or ransomed back to their family at great cost, the Plebians and merceneries were given a much more merciful choice - to leave in peace to their home, or to submit to the one true god and stay as handsomely-paid soldiers of the kingdom. The vast majority chose to stay, and their tactics and technology - the best the Mediterranean had to offer - diffused into Israeli society in the coming years, transforming it into the legendary military power it would become in the centuries that followed. When the armies of Yahweh spilled into Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, 400 years later, the beleaguered defenders silently cursed the day Augustus let his merry band of Equestrians march off into the desert.
[1] - the Hejaz
[2] - the Asir mountains
The last siege of Damascus.
