LAST ACT IN MARSEILLE
Every time I lifted my shield to defend myself, my reactions came slower, and my breath was laboured. There had been no warning but the hiss of crossbow bolts through the air, followed by the heartrending screams of men and horses in their death throes. That was the first we knew that the Angevin army, that we had thought beaten after the slaughter near Tours, had attacked from ambush. Now we were isolated, cut off from the Prince and his knights who had charged ahead, though I doubted that many of them could still be alive after that murderous first volley. Yet I think I must have been blessed that day, for it seemed as though I saw the world from a great height, and I knew to call the rest of the levy together to protect the longbowmen, who were exposed on our right flank. The French came on, rank after rank of armoured spearmen bellowing the name of their leader, the Provost of Marseille. No other general had given us such trouble as he, for when we took and killed the Dauphin, we had thought the Angevin French finished, but he rallied them and came back at us again and again, and now it seemed that he would kill me too. We held the shieldwall against two, three charges, though many died and though my arm felt like lead from raising my shield. But we could hold no longer, and the archers had spent their last shafts, and still the French came. Nothing but a miracle could have saved us then, and a miracle in truth it must have been, though I knew nothing of it at the time. The man beside me fell, and his killer stepped past me. Though I tried to raise my shield in defence, I had nothing left, and I am only alive today because I slipped on the blood of my fallen comrade, causing the spear thrust that should have gone through my belly to slice into my arm instead. I fell, then, senseless with pain, and knew no more of the battle. But Bishop Odo tells me that even as I fell, the French Provost was cut down by the Prince who had rallied the remaining knights, and fallen upon the French army from behind, slaying many and routing the rest, and so it was that the two crowns were made one and King Lewes made to sit, enthroned, in the City of Paris, Ruler of Britain and Grand Seigneur of France, and the proud lords of Aquitaine made to do him homage.
The Italian Job
The Anglo-Norman domain now stretched from Great Britain and Ireland in the North to Gascony and Bordeaux in the South, and wherever houses grouped together to form a town or city in Northern France, they did so under the watchful eyes of and English overlord. England's merchants ranged far and wide; her diplomats maintained strong alliances with Germany and Spain; and the scattered remnants of the Angevin French had retreated to their new capital of Marseilles. I was offered a swordsmith's guild in Caen on the same turn as completing a blacksmith there, which made me wonder if the completion of new buildings in a particular chain could be a trigger for a guild invitation. What bliss in that dawn to be alive, eh?
The serpent in the garden, however, was the Duke of Milan. One of the reasons that France was so weak and ready for the plucking was that the Milanese had shattered a French army and captured Dijon just before King Lewes attacked. As a few have remarked on these forums, the French really do have a tough time of it early on. At any rate, it became evident that his Grace's territorial ambitions extended beyond Milan, and within three turns there were two large Milanese armies on Anglo-French soil. Spies reported that each consisted of 10 to 12 units of town militia, a couple of units of crossbow milita from the city-state of Genoa, and that mailed knights made up the balance. Neither was commanded by a family member or general, though - they must have got on the wrong side of the Venetian assassins. Fortunately King Lewes, anticipating something like this (although I'd actually thought that it would be the Spanish or an additional French stack that caused the trouble), had sent reinforcements of Longbowmen and Feudal foot knights from Nottingham and Caen, and this reinforced army proved sufficient to beat off the Milanese near Paris.
The battle itself was an eye-opener. The Italians attacked uphill, in the driving rain. This negated much of the strength of the longbows, and my knights were unable to charge. In the end, the brunt of the battle was borne by the Foot Knights, and but for the King's strong command rating (5 stars) and the fortunate death of the Italian general when a unit of knights cuts him off from the main force, the English army would have been annihilated. As it is, we won but at horrible cost. Barely one man in every four who started the battle was left alive, and England's knights had been cut down in droves.
The second Milanese stack came just short of attacking the weakened English before they could reinforce, so I was, by merging the survivors into units of veterans and bringing in another turn's worth of reinforcements from England and Caen, able to withstand their assault the following turn. The King's army chasds and, with the aid of an allied HRE army, annihilated the routers. This had dramatic diplomatic consequences; as a direct result of entering into this tiny skirmish, the HRE was dragged into a war with Milan, and also lost alliances with Hungary and the Byzantines. Alles Gut from my point of view - the less secure HRE is on its own borders the less chance it will turn on me before I can wipe out the French and win the campaign.
Among the sun-drenched hills
With the Milanese humbled, I offered a white ceasefire (which they accepted). So, having secured the borders of the King's realm with a judicious admixture of alliances and military victories, it was time to finish the French and, with them, this story. It was the work of barely two turns to outfit and send an army against Toulouse - with a siege train of ballistae in tow, they were able to reduce the walls and capture the castle at the first attempt. The French were down but not out though - to my very pleased surprise, by the time the army arrives outside Marseille, the French have managed to assemble a full 20 unit army to resist. The campaign therefore ended in suitably dramatic fashion, with the clash of a full early period English army against a similar French one, both led by strong commanders. The difference was that if the French won, it would merely delay the inevitable, whereas an English victory would be the final chapter in this tale.
The battle took place among the Marseille hills. The Anglo-Norman army, led by faction heir Prince Walter, was composed roughly half of knights and a quarter each of infantry and missile troops (if one counts the two ballista units as missile troops). The free French responded with a more balanced force: crossbowmen and peasant archers, a few spearmen, and a good number of cavalry of their own. As the French were light on spearmen, and as it would be fun to make it work, I tried to engineer a massed charge of knights to sweep away their screen of missileers.
It was a catastrophe. In a reversal of Agincourt, the English knights never lower their lances and charge in swords drawn, to be skewered on the spears of the French militia who ran up from behind their missile troops. The French then moved up, leaving a neat line of English corpses and dead horses lying behind them on the ground. Ultimately, I still won - on Hard level the AI rarely beats me except where their numbers and general bonuses seriously outnumber my own - but it's less of a cut and dried affair than it might have been.
Ultimately the campaign ends with a whimper more than a bang. The victorious army besieges Marseille and I autoresolve the last conflict, that brings the campaign to a close. The Empire encompasses sixteen provinces, the Scots are crushed, the French eliminated, and the Anglo-Normans established as the pre-eminent power of the West. A most satisfactory conclusion!
Well, that's the first Vignette complete, and I hope that some of you have enjoyed reading it. The French are next - with pictures.
As for the unnamed spearman? I would like to have given him lands and wealth, but it was not to be. He was only a Saxon, after all...
With our victory won, King Lewes made his peace with those few rebels that still disputed his reign, and with the Emperor of the Germans, and the Spaniards, and he himself made a pilgrimage to Rome to appease the Pope. But when he died the new King didn't need levied soldiers, far less crippled ones, and I was given some coin and told I was a free man, and cast out from the barracks. But what was that freedom worth to me? My last gold was long since spent drinking and whoring in Marseille, and that, my son, is why you find me here, tending the gardens for these holy men whose charity provides me with bread and some vegetables, and, once a month, some meat from Abbot Odo's table. Leave me to my devoirs, now, for the Vespers bell is ringing and I have many tasks - and may God go with you, always.
