The Vindelici were gone, seemingly relieving some pressure on our borders. Or so we thought. A Helvetii army wandered into our territory, near our freshly conquered town. For a couple of days it seemed like they would definitely attack us, so we had our men on guard, preparing for invasion.
But it never came, and the Helvetii army went south towards Quadi territory. How those two interact does not concern us, so we turned our attentions elsewhere.
The Cherusci had declared war on their northern neighbors, the Frisii, drawing away most of their armies to fight, so it seems like we just found our next target for war!
A quick reconnaissance showed that the main Cherusci force is fighting the Frisii, and they were about to give each other quite the pitched battle I can imagine. The Frisii would not go down without a fight.
As the Cherusci-Frisii War raged on, we gathered our forces: an army led by me and another by my cousin, Chariovalda. We had recruited from the prime of Marcomanni society, and fitted them with the best equipment we had. With winter firmly in place, we snuck across the border and made winter camp in the dark forest on our border, preparing to strike when spring came.
In the meantime we got a surprising declaration of war from an unknown northern tribe, the Rugii. Why they declared war? I'm not sure, but they were far away and I don’t think they posed a threat. But just in case I posted scouts to patrol our northern border and began to raise a force to defend our lands from invasion. Just in case.
When the snow receded, we struck. There was an army assembling inside their walls, and a very small one just outside. The plan I had was to strike the smaller army to goad the larger army and the garrison to come out to fight. After some skilled maneuvering, well, to make a long story short, it worked.
The battle ahead was going to be very hard. The Cherusci had many elite soldiers in their large force that would prove very hard to crack. We had numbers, but they had skill.
Thankfully we were not coming into this battle on one foot. We managed to equip all our men with armor and helmets. No more would our men be charging into battle with bare chests.
We could see the Cherusci soldiers marching towards us in the distance.
The lines of Cherusci men snaked across the field, and behind them we saw something which struck terror into every man’s heart: artillery. The Cherusci had artillery! This meant we had to move fast to prevent our force from getting annihilated by those giant machines.
As the two lines closed, I ordered our men to reorganize from two lines to just one, stretching out our line to match there's. Initially the plan was to use the double line to crash through the Cherusci lines, then roll up their now exposed flanks and crush them. But now I made the line stretch. One section of the line would meet the Cherusci head on while the other half would hit the flanks.
It didn’t work, as the Cherusci just swung their line around to face both in a solid line. Not wanting to risk our forces and spend more time in artillery range, I just decided to charge the men forward.
Some units had to run quite the distance under fire.
Some units were under fire from enemy arrows.
Others by enemy artillery.
So when we finally closed the range with the enemy artillery crew, the revenge we took on them felt sweet.
Up and down the line, the fighting was ferocious. I watched as parts of the line began to falter, and I had to quickly divert from parts of the line which were doing well to reinforce the other parts.
I saw a few Cherusci units trying to flank us around a small hill, so I sent a few units to counter them. Among the Cherusci units was the Cherusci general. I was tempted to go out myself and meet him in combat, but Chariovalda stopped me. He said that we could not risk losing me, and volunteered to go instead. I let him; after all, it was to be his first taste of combat.
After that Cherusci flanking force was tied down, Chariovalda charged.
The battle raged on, and our forced began to take the upper hand in the battle.
All except in the left flank: our units holding down that flank were ground down to almost nothing, with an entire unit being wiped out in the process. So it wasn’t surprising that what was left of the remaining units in that area retreated.
But even though the left flank fell, the center and right flanks turned in our favor, and we managed to get enough troops to the broken left flank to mend it and prevent any more damage. Eventually we broke them, and chased down the remaining Cherusci units.
The last enemies were driven from the battlefield, and our men, bloodied and exhausted, were finally able to rest and enjoy our first victory in the long war for unification that was ahead of us.
We had taken heavy losses. Over a third of our men were now in graves, though we had exacted a much heavier toll on the Cherusci, as almost their entire force was wiped out.
That night we demanded the surrender of Tulifurdum, and the broken and exhausted garrison complied with no fight.
We consolidated units that had taken heavy losses in preparation for our next push, restored order in the newly captured city, and made sure that our position was secure in case the Cherusci or their Semnones allies decided to make a move.
We also found out that the Romans, under their leader Augustus, had moved in on Koria, ejecting the Quadi in the process. This was certainly an interesting development which we would have to keep an eye on, as the Romans were volatile neighbors who could not be trusted. I suppose that it’s a good thing that they are pre-occupied at the moment, but we don’t know how long that will last. I just hope we can unite the Germanic people when that time comes.
Author’s note: I will be getting a new computer in the coming weeks, so hopefully you will be seeing better screenshots from me in the near future! Assuming the savegame file transfer goes smoothly, that is.
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