A Dark Betrayal - England's Most Horrifying and Finest Hour

Hi all,

The following is a short pseudo-narrative based on some ingame experiences (Stainless Shield 4.2). Please note that I've increased strengths of all units by a factor of ten. I do not mean this in a game sense, but in a figurative sense. Therefore, a normal unit of one hundred and fifty men becomes a unit of one thousand and five hundred men.

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A Dark Betrayal - England's Most Horrifying and Finest Hour

The Kingdom of England faced manifold challenges throughout the 13th century. The French menace around Caen and the conquered territories to the east of the strategic fort seemed neverending. Heroes arose in the midst of the clatter of battle - men such as Harry the Innocent, who dealt the French a series of crushing defeats in his thirty year tenure as Lord of the Reaches. English valour bested France's chivalry again, and again. However, the success of the English nobility on French battlefields counted for naught when the Danish scourge struck the northern English city of York, sacking it in 1240.

In one night, over ten thousand townspeople were slaughtered by the northern barbarians, their bodies piled high and burnt in vast pyres, their belongings forfeited to the warlords of the icy wastes. No English King could allow such a crime to go unpunished. Certainly, no English King could allow a large and developed town on English soil to be held by the barbarians for long. After all the blood and toil of the 1100-1150AD conquest of the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish, the Danes deigned to contest English superiority in the Isles. It was a deadly insult. King Henry dutifully answered the call of justice, summoning Sir George Tame and his powerful Army of the Roads to the colours. Tame's army, over 17,000 strong, included at least 5,000 well trained Welsh longbowmen, 3,000 English huscarls, 2,000 axemen and 5,000 cavalry, several hundred of whom were knights of the old blood.

Tame's army was undoubtedly the most powerful in England, with its nearest rival in London barely one half its strength. It took many long months to concentrate and march the host to York, where it proceeded to lay siege to the town. During the course of five long years of siege (the Danes expertly rationed their supplies, hoping that the English would simply give up and go back south), Tame's army was reinforced with more mounted units and men-at-arms wielding the spear. Finally, in 1246 the Danes sallied forth, their seemingly endless supplies at last exhausted. In a bitter, hours long struggle their light infantry was savaged by repeated cavalry charges of practical English noblemen and their retainers, and their heavy infantry struck down by axemen and skillful Welsh archery. Of the Danish cavalry, all that needs be said is that they advanced proudly and died well.

In the end, it was an unequal contest. Tame had positioned his army badly, but had a great superiority in manpower and a qualitative superiority. Some 800 English, Welsh and Scots died on the Danes spears and beneath their axes. Yet, they were joined by 3,500 Danes during the battle. A further 5,500 prisoners were slaughtered by Tame - retribution for their transgressions against the English crown and people. Bells were rung in London, and a great celebration of the victory took place, lasting many weeks. Gifts and praise were showered on Tame, who was granted significant lands around York, the town he so heroically retook from the Northmen. All seemed well and proper.

Over the next thirty years, however, the once youthful Tame grew old and bitter. King Henry's death in 1242, before the campaign against the Danes had even ended, struck him hard. What struck him harder was his illegibility for the throne, which went to King Edward (who became known as the Wrathful in due course of time). Tame waited for his opportunity, his popularity high, and his Army of the Roads still the premier force in the Isles. His enormous wealth, primarily stemming from his family's lucrative trade with the continent, financed much, and the Crown paid for the rest, happily enough. As the years dragged on, however, he lost all traces of hope that his life's ambitions would be fulfilled. A less power hungry man may have settled for the universal love of a grateful English populace and lands stretching on for leagues. Sir George Tame the Saviour, the Merciless was not such a man.

In 1266, after crushing a massive Danish invasion in a day-long bloodbath near York - costing his army over 3,300 men, and the Danes 12,600 - Tame was approached by a Danish emissary. Tired of the Beast, as Tame had become known (he had slaughtered at least 6,000 of the Danes after the Battle of the Culloch Woods), the Danes adopted another approach to gaining a level of control over the lands of their most developed neighbour. They offered him everything he had wanted for so long. He was to be their surrogate in a Tamesian England. Danish money would pay for Tame's campaign against the Crown. Recruiting thousands of peasants and further reinforcements of mercenary men-at-arms, Sir George Tame marched his host into York in 1275 and killed the mayor of the small city brutally (in a public quartering), thus declaring his challenge to King Edward's right to rule the Isles.

For several weeks, His Royal Majesty was beside himself with white-hot fury. Tame had gone over to the Danes, shaming one of noble England's oldest and proudest families, and he took the greatest army in England with him! King Edward had Tame's messengers slaughtered to a man, before swearing vengeance on his traitorous vassal. Edward's subsequent Great Call was issued to Exeter, Nottingham, Cardiff and, of course, London. Thousands of billmen from London were mustered, as well as three thousand demi-lancers (England's industrious and enterprizing merchants and craftsmen in armour, bearing lances; a sight to behold!). From central England, hundreds of nobles answered Edward's call, bringing with them thousands of well equipped retainers. From the West, men-at-arms issued forth. Thousands of men bearing the longbow followed. It was to be a Host of Hosts. Gathered under King Edward's own banner, the long muster was finally complete in 1276.

King Edward the Wrathful and his Royal Army of the Realm streamed north, spending a fitful winter camped just north of Nottingham. Edward gave Tame one last chance to repent and surrender (in order to face the King's Justice). In 1277 Tame signalled his refusal by allowing his knights and their retainers the opportunity to pillage and loot many of the villages a few leagues north of Edward's encamped force. Enraged, Edward ordered his Lords to battle. Finally, three weeks later, the Royal Army and the Army of the Road found themselves arrayed against one another on a gentle slope favouring Edward's forces. Long grass dominated the slope, with few other terrain features to speak of, though a small forest beckoned just northwest of Edward's mighty force.

Sir Tame had, however, blundered. His excellent Welsh bow became the target of a deadly swarm of bodkin loosed by Edward's numerous, well equipped, motivated archers. These men were English patriots, incensed by Tame's betrayal and moved by the King's outrage and appeal to the people. The Welsh receiving the arrows were there to be paid by Tame's Danish financiers. It was an uneven moral struggle, and the English massacred the first line of Tame's advance - his fabled Welsh bowmen. Edward used his cavalry as the hammer to his battleline's anvil. Thousands of horsemen and knights charged down the flanks, as Tame's battleline walked through the dwindling ranks of the Welsh to get at Edward's men-at-arms. Axemen, swordsmen and spearmen charged the serried ranks of Edward's well-armoured billmen and swordsmen wearing half-plate. As Tame's forces closed the final gap of the charge, Edward's forces conducted their own spirited charge.

Edward's cavalry, in the meantime, collided with a solid wall of Tame's own mounted forces, and a desperate struggle ensued. The conclusion, however, was not in doubt, as Edward's forces were more numerous and driven by greater virtue than those of Tame. A mere twenty minutes later, most of Tame's cavalry was disengaging. During this time, elements of Edward's cavalry had gotten amidst the ranks of the Welsh bow, and routed them thoroughly.

Meanwhile, the infantry men-at-arms hacked at each other for well over an hour. Tame, sensing impending disaster, jumped into the fray. His kinsmen retainers nearly broke the spine of an entire section of Edward's line, but reinforcements of spear held them at bay, as the swordsmen continued their bloody business. It was then that Edward's massive cavalry force descended on Tame's already badly demoralized mercenaries fighting in the centre. His co-conspirator knights, their retainers and hundreds of mounted mercenaries had fled before the epic English rush, and had become subsumed by it. This force was now loosed against Tame's rearguard, which broke quickly, without much ado.

At this point, Tame knew all was lost. Shamefully, he attempted to escape the tightening noose, as his wavering lines finally collapsed, and the battle became a slaughter-in-rout. His personal prowess was substantiated, as his Crown Guard killed almost four hundred of their enemy in a headlong charge that broke an entire banner of cavalry - in this infamous episode almost fifty English nobles lost their lives, and several families were bankrupted by this ill turn of fortune. In the aftermath of this tragedy, however, Tame's Crown Guard was destroyed to a man by the vengeful English.

Tame died fighting, to his credit. King Edward the Wrathful exterminated the remnants of Tame's rebel army. Having lost some 3,320 men, Edward set an example that all of England would understand; of Tame's 15,000 men, 14,650 were slaughtered, barely 5,000 of them in the thick of battle. The site of the battlefield became known as the Red Slope. The grass that grew there in the aftermath of the battle took sustenance from the vast quantities of spilt human blood. It was a horrifying place; deserving of being the final resting ground of Sir George Tame the Saviour, the Merciless, the Traitor.

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Thanks for reading.