The Sicilian Famine
"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of. Some of them, I tell myself that I did what I needed to do and the costs were… acceptable. Sicily… What happened to Sicily wasn't one of them."
-Anax Rachel, Dual Kingdom of Crete and Mycenae
"They came to us with fire, iron, and promises. The first they wielded against those who stood against, the other two gifted to those who yielded. Iron for tools unlike any we had ever held, promises of greater prosperity, happiness for us and our children if we would bend the knee. When the crops failed and the hoplites came, we knew that the promises were lies."
-King Byblos, Sicily
Few people in the Age of Rust survived the 11 AE Drought unscathed. Crops failures struck the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and the majority were forced at least into tighter rationing, while worse-off places saw outright food riots. But while others saw shortages and social unrest, Sicily
starved, leaving behind a legacy that has scarred relations between the island and its eastern overlord of Crete ever since, and will likely continue to do so for generations to come.
The Conquest of Sicily
Sicily was a prize almost without equal for the Dual Kingdom, with rich sulfur deposits, a large population, and an immensely valuable strategic position for controlling trade with the west (particularly the tin and amber routes.) Even after Malta's revolt against New Washington turned it into a willing vassal of Crete, Sicily still retained an immense level of importance. Starting in early 10 AE, the Cretan military under General Jessica Myers-Wilson would launch a campaign to bring the entire island under their control.
This would prove somewhat challenging, not from the capabilities of the Sicilians, who were mostly fighting with stone and the occasional bronze weapon, but from the sheer size of the island and its population of over 200,000. Only a relative handful of settlements were willing to submit without some show of force from Crete, and often soldiers would leave a settlement only for it to rebel shortly afterwards. The campaign would drag on for the better part of two years, lasting well into the summer of 11 AE before the final stubborn holdouts were brought into line.
At the time, the Dual Kingdom's leadership had good reason to be pleased with the results. While the campaign had been fairly long, it had proven a much easier affair than the one launched against Mainland Greece, owing both to the lack of Uptime weapons and expertise among their enemy, and the improved capabilities of the Cretan military. With the war over, the eastern coast of Sicily was annexed, with plans drawn up for the founding of two new Palace-Cities, Syracuse and Atlas, while the rest of the island would be ruled by a series of vassal-kingdoms, to be steadily absorbed into the Dual Kingdom proper over time as the local nobility assimilated. With both Malta and Sicily in Crete's hands, the island kingdom was poised to completely dominate the Western Mediterranean trade, effectively shutting out any of its rivals from western expansion.
Drought and Response
When the 11 AE Drought hit, Crete itself was one of the least affected nations. While crops such as Saffron would wither and an overall downturn on the economy was expected, Crete could remain food-secure thanks to its vast fishing fleet. Sicily on the other hand, was in far more dire straits. The extended campaign to conquer the island meant that much of the workforce had been battling against the Cretan invasion instead of tending to the fields. Combined with the drought, famine was virtually guaranteed on the island.
Anax Rachel Wilson was determined to do her utmost to alleviate the worst of this. Aside from her personal experience with starvation before the Event, in purely practical terms Crete couldn't afford to alienate the local Sicilians if the Dual Kingdom was to gain anything from holding the island. As such, among the various bills presented to the Senate in response to the drought was one for direct famine relief for Sicily.
Wilson expected significant resistance to this bill in particular, and was unpleasantly vindicated in this belief. While most other bills to address the poor harvest passed by relatively easily, relief for the Sicilians ran headlong into significant opposition. Many viewed it as little more than offering handouts to the enemy who had been fighting them mere weeks before when loyal Cretans were already needing to tighten their belts, and meaningful famine relief for over 200,000 people would bite deeply into the Kingdom's reserves. The bill floundered, was modified, watered down, proposed again, and was voted down again. Despite their best efforts to wrangle the Senate, Wilson and her allies struggled to pass any meaningful relief for Sicily. Eventually some minor concessions were extracted, though it was wholly inadequate and mostly limited to territory directly annexed by Crete rather than its vassals who still made up the vast majority of the island's population.
It was at this point, as the island slowly began to starve, that disaster would strike, in large part due to the actions of a single, overeager priestess.
One Turbulent Priestess
Ever since seizing Knossos, Wilson had gone to great efforts to secure the loyalty of the priesthood, allying with reformists to remove the conservatives during the initial fighting, and later purging more disloyal elements when they attempted rebellion some years later. By late 11 AE, between these efforts and the increasing influence of the Aclippean priesthood, Wilson had good reason to believe that the Priestesses were, if not entirely subservient, then at least cooperative enough.
In many ways, this assumption was correct, but Wilson's actions had created an undercurrent of sentiment that was, while not outright opposed to the Anax, moving in directions quite opposite to what she desired. Horrified to learn that their civilization had been effectively absorbed into the Mycenaean one and largely forgotten about, a number of Priestesses were becoming leading figures in a budding sense of Cretan Nationalism, determined to ensure that Crete remained a civilization that would be remembered for millennia to come, not swallowed up by those they saw as barbarians. In many ways, this was beneficial for Wilson, as such figures could be counted among her supporters for the purpose of nation-strengthening. In Sicily however, it was about to lead to total catastrophe.
Kikera, the leading Priestess in newly founded Syracuse, was among their number. Chosen for the assignment due to her vigor and loyalty, having been an enthusiastic backer of many of Wilson's reforms, she had her own thoughts on the worsening Sicilian famine. To her, the famine was something of a tragedy, yes, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to hasten the assimilation of Sicily into Minoan culture. Kikera, along with many of her allies, thought little of the native Sicilians, viewing them as savages who, at best, needed to be civilized by Crete, forcibly if need be, and be removed to make way for proper Cretan colonists if they proved intractable.
As the famine worsened, one of Kikera's first policies was to
limit where the famine relief went to. Grain and fish doles from Crete were restricted, contingent on the recipients' full rejection of their old ways and embracing the Minoan pantheon and culture. Taxes across Sicily were raised as well, with the bounty likewise kept to those who assimilated or worked on various building projects (many of which included the demolishment of Sicilian religious sites in favor of Minoan structures), while other surplus was shipped back to Crete to help the homeland with its own troubles with the drought.
It wasn't long before these policies bore their rotten fruit. Many villages in or near Cretan territory found themselves unable to pay the taxes in produce, instead forced to either send their people to work as corvee labor or otherwise lose the land entirely to the benefit of the small but growing population of Cretan settlers who were becoming a new class of landowners.
Famine
As the 11 AE harvest season came to a close and the taxes were acquired, famine had already begun to sweep the island. Between the drought and the heavy taxes, most villages simply lacked the food to feed themselves, a problem that had been repeated virtually island-wide.
The burden fell particularly hard upon the Castelluccians, the easternmost of the native Sicilians. During the Conquest of Sicily, they had been some of Crete's most determined opponents, and as such, had been issued a particularly onerous tax burden, even as a significant chunk of their land was directly annexed by Crete. Petitions for aid or relief fell on deaf ears. Even in the cases where they reached Crete, it was assumed that the issue was due to known factors, namely the drought and lack of Senate approval for large-scale famine relief. No one was aware, until it was far too late, that Kikera's administration was deliberately exacerbating the problem.
Sicilians flooded into the cities, desperate for food or work with which to purchase food, and Kikera had plans on how to use the surplus of labor. Mass labor would accelerate the construction of Syracuse and Atlas, and Sicilians were recruited by the thousands with the promise of sustenance. Their relief was short-lived, as whatever nutrition was gained from meager rations was matched by the increased demands from hard labor. Those who could not work were easily replaced, as the flood of starving peasants seemed endless.
Alongside famine came disease. While the emergence of smallpox was already sounding alarm bells across the Eastern Mediterranean, in Sicily the killers were more mild diseases, ones that took advantage of immune systems weakened by malnourishment. By late 11 AE, thousands were already dead, with tens of thousands more to follow before it ended. Not merely from starvation or disease, though both would continue to claim innumerable victims each month, but from another, more bloody cause.
Riots and Rebellion
The combination of harsh taxes, widespread famine, and a total disrespect for the native Sicilian culture, coupled with the arrogance of Kikera and her subordinates had turned reluctantly subservient tribes rebellious once more and caused even loyal ones to reconsider their allegiance. By the time the Anax on Crete became aware of the full extent of these activities, it was already too late.
Resistance against Crete started with disputes between over-taxed villages and Cretan soldiers sent to enforce them, which often became physical confrontations. Before long this was joined by protests from the native vassals who were also suffering under the heavy tax burden and receiving little of the relief from the rampant famine. Rural communities and cities alike were starving, and the actions of their Cretan overlords seemed to only make things worse.
Across the months of September to November, things began to happen in rapid succession. The Castelluccians rose up in full-scale rebellion, with King Byblos calling on his people to drive the Minoan invaders back into the sea. In the Kingdom of Naro, the Cretan loyalist king lost both his throne and his life to a claimant of a more rebellious disposition, who joined with the Castelluccians in rebellion. The Kingdom of Palermo, the westernmost of Crete's vassals, would get off relatively lightly, as the king remained alive and loyal to Crete, along with most of the noble leadership. The population however, was as hungry and angry as those across the rest of the island, with village uprisings and rebellions commonplace. Across all of Sicily, rebellious tribes attacked loyalists, Cretan patrols, and granaries. Even the Dual Kingdom's own territory saw widespread rebellion, particularly in the cities where thousands of starving Sicilians had conglomerated and now rioted against their occupiers.
One such riot in Syracuse was particularly devastating, as corvee laborers assigned to the still being constructed city began using their tools on any Minoan they could get their hands on, even battling with the Hoplites from the garrison who'd intervened to put down the revolt by force. By the time the fighting was over, months of work had been undone and hundreds were dead, among them the priestess Kikera, whose policies had caused things to worsen to this point to begin with. Her death would do little to stop the growing revolt however, which by that point had spread across the entire island like wildfire.
Observing the rebellion objectively, it had little chance of long-term success. Sicily as a whole was still largely stuck with weapons of stone and occasional bronze, along with whatever iron tools that rebellious laborers now turned on their occupiers. Even among the warriors of the vassal kingdoms, Crete had been careful not to equip them with weapons that could actually threaten their hold, with most having little more than iron pikes and a few surplus crossbows. It is unlikely however, that most of the rebels particularly cared for that detail, starving and angry as they were. To them, a relatively quick death by Cretan bullets or blades may have seemed a better option than a slow one from the famine.
Upon receiving the news from Sicily, Anax Wilson was, unsurprisingly, furious. Years of planning had been undone in a handful of months, and some remarked that Kikera should consider herself lucky that she had died in the revolt before Wilson could get her hands on her. But the damage had already been done. Sicily was in an open rebellion that would need to be suppressed once more, and relations between Crete and the native Sicilians had been permanently and thoroughly damaged, and between this, the still ongoing famine, and the looming spread of smallpox, the island's future promised little more than additional suffering.
