CHAPTER 58
Volume II: the Land across the Water ROOTS
The dream of Crusade was first dreamed in Etruria, so the tragedy that follows might best be described as a family history. Like winter before the monstrous vitality of spring, the Etruscans retreated before the Ebionites. Maritime trade entirely collapsed. The Middle Sea became a Radinate lake for a millennium and the imperial pillars19 tumbled into a vacuum that created new wars and new rivals. The first city-state to throw off this doddering parent was Ariminum.20 The Etrurian21 peoples who had retreated from the coast to the more defensible vantages of northern heartland, the hills and mountains took longer to rise.
There followed the Age of the Castellan, when every lord was fundamentally a land lord. These mounted thieves preyed upon the isolated towns and sought, with onerous tolls and outright robbery, to inhibit trade – an inherently unchivalrous activity. But slowly and irrefutably the market developed until the towns became cities strong enough to overthrow these parasites. With the aid of a more welcome breed of parasite – bankers – Etrurian mercantilism expanded until the Middle Sea again beckoned, a siren call, a call to arms. In one of history’s more ironic reversals, the old Radinate, now a fractured realm, faced an invasion from a West that was unified, vigorous and murderous.