Sabrian Wars
The Sabrian Wars were a series of two wars between 656 and 692 CE fought between the Makedonian Empire and the Sabrian Empire. The First Sabrian War was fought between 656-661 CE over the eastern Siduri coastline. The Second Sabrian War occurred between 680-692 CE and was fought primarily at sea on the island of Lirinya. The wars pitted the two dominant powers of Siduri at the time against each other, the Makedonians controlling much of northern Siduri from coast to coast, while the Sabrian Empire dominated eastern Siduri.
A principle naval power, the Sabrians had amassed a large empire spread out over much of eastern Siduri and the coast of southeast Eracura, as well as exercising de-facto control of the Cacertian isles. In 638 CE Deinokrates III began his conquest of Quenmin, which brought the Makedonians into contact, and eventual conflict, with Sabrian holdings along the Quenminese coast. The First Sabrian War broke out in 656 CE following the Makedonian capture of Sabrian ports within Quenmin and over the course of five years the Makedonians steadily reduced the Sabrian presence along the continent. In the process of doing so, the Makedonians exercised complete control of Quenmin and established a foothold in neighboring Knichus. Sabrian dominance of the seas allowed Sabria to continue to resupply its forces on the continent which eventually led to a cessation of hostilities in 661 CE.
The ascension of Heliodoros to the Makedonian throne in 677 led to a renewal of tensions with Sabria resulting in the Makedonians breaking the peace treaty in 680. By 683 the Sabrians had effectively been pushed entirely out of Siduri proper, but Heliodoros followed up with an extended naval campaign and launched an invasion of Lirinya in 687. Initially successful, the Makedonians conquered nearly a quarter of the island before the Sabrian general Quintus Valentinus inflicted a decisive defeat at the Battle of Asakumo in 690 CE which halted the Makedonian campaign and re-establishing Sabrian control over Lirinya. A second peace treaty was signed in 692, permanently ending hostilities between the two powers.
Both powers were exhausted by the wars and it is believed to have contributed in part to their decline. Despite their victory in the second conflict, the Sabrian Empire was left bankrupt by the defeat as most of its continental holdings gone. This left Sabria left devoid of much of its wealth and power which had relied heavily on its now-shattered trade networks. Throughout much of the 8th and 9th centuries Sabria was wracked by several internal conflicts and entered into steep decline, eventually dissolving in 858 CE. The Makedonian Empire would end the war at it's greatest territorial extent, but steadily declined in the coming centuries. Between 800 CE to 1100 CE the Makdonians gradually lost control of eastern Siduri as Quenminese rebellions and the rise of the Arkoennites steadily reduced Makedonian influence while the rise of Islamic caliphates in Mansuriyyah further divided the Empire's attention.
Heavily studied by historians, the Sabrian Wars involved participants from all over Tyran in the form of levy soldiers and mercenaries fielded by both sides. Both empires fielded large armies and navies resulting in some of the largest battles of late antiquity with many battlefields remaining popular archeological sites and tourist attractions. More than a thousand treatises and studies have been published on the wars since their conclusion over a millennia ago, and the wars are extensively covered in the historical education of both Syara and Cacerta.
Background and origin
Orestes II had ended his campaign of Arkoenn in 226 BCE, effectively establishing the Makedonian Empire's borders with Quenmin which stood more or less unchanged for nearly 800 years. During this time the Makedonians embarked on a number of other campaigns, crossing the Sundering Sea and invading Borea in the 4th Century under Anaximenes. Starting in the 5th and 6th centuries the Makedonians conquered and absorbed Mansuriyyah and extended their control south along the west Siduri coast. In 635 CE Deinokrates ascended the throne in Pella and immediately aimed to expand Makedon's borders east following the onset of the Second Quenminese Anarchy, which left Quenmin fractured and in a state of constant warfare. Deinokrates assembled a massive army and began his campaign in 638 CE. The disunified Quenminese warring states were in no position to challenge the Makedonian Army, and Deinokrates proceeded to conquer or subjugate Quenmin over the course of five years. It was during this campaign that the Makedonians first came into direct contact with the Sabrian Empire, which maintained control over several coastal strips of land and ports along the Quenminese coast of the Bara Sea.
Indirect relations between the two powers had existed for centuries beforehand through merchants and traders traveling along the Siduri Coast. First contact is believed to have occurred with Kydonian and Makedonian sailors attempting to circumnavigate the continent, some who eventually settled in Gylias to become Hellene Gylians. Sabrian emmissaries were dispatched sometime in the 2nd and 3rd century but never reached Syara proper for reasons that are still not certain. By the time of the Makedonian conquest of Quenmin the Sabrian Empire was already in a state of slow decline following the collapse of the Acrean Empire a few centuries prior, which had robbed the Sabrians of a major trade partner. While the arrival of the Makedonians on the borders of Sabrian holdings in Siduri alarmed some Sabrian leaders, the two powers co-existed for more than a decade without major conflict, and both states signed treaties recognizing the other's sovereignty.
The traditional historical perspective of the Sabrian War as crafted by Cacertian and Syaran historians throughout much of the early modern era have typically painted the Sabrian Wars as an inevitable dialectical conflict between the two regional superpowers. Modern historians on the other hand tend to view the origin of the conflict as more nuanced. The expansion of the Makedonians into a Quenminese state in the midst of a warring states period had left the region generally unstable, with numerous vassal and client states forming complex, and at times seemingly contradictory, networks of alliances that both Makedon and Sabria were drown into in the decade between the Makedonian conquest and the outbreak of the first war. The common consensus today is that both powers were ultimately drawn into fighting each other while weaving through the web of regional relations as a result of numerous competing interests rather than out a simple desire to struggle for supremacy of eastern Siduri.