Battle reports thread - King of the Romans PBM

[OverKnight]

The Battle for the Adana Frontier, 1288

With the Mongols defeated, Chancellor Matthias turned his attention to the other threats to Outremer. The Prinz would guard the southern approaches and Jerusalem, but Matthias saw another threat to the north, the Turks. For too long, they had taken advantage of the Reich's focus on the Horse Lords to move unhindered through Imperial territory. In fact, their incursion between Adana and Antioch in 1278 had nearly collapsed the defenses of Outremer and delayed the efforts against the Mongols. Only a last minute shift of Count Hans's army had parried that thrust.

Matthias had moved northeast of Adana to deny any further use of Imperial territory to the Turks and keep them from reinforcing Caesarea. Imperial sovereignty and a sense of duty to aid the Byzantines demanded this. The Chancellor and his army found themselves facing Kasim of Kabul and a Turk army northeast of Adana in a valley that had long served as a transit route for them.

The Army of Outremer was outnumbered, but not outclassed. Matthias and his men had honed their skills against the Scourge of God. These little cousins from the Steppe would be vanquished as well. Matthias attacked during the night. Taking note of the terrain, he decided to have his men seize the high ground on his right flank.

A lieutenant objected to this, claiming that running the army up to the high ground would exhaust them. The Chancellor replied, "Either we take the hill, or they do. Which would you prefer, running up the hill and fighting down it, or walking and fighting up it?"

The man quickly relented and followed his orders. The night attack and speed of the Chancellor's advance seemed to confuse the Turks, and they made no move to take the hill themselves.

The next half hour would go down in the military annals of the Reich as the "Adana Turk Shoot". The Pavise Crossbowmen emptied their quivers into the roiling mass of men in valley. A few furtive assaults by the Turks up the hill were repulsed by withering missile fire. By the time the crossbowmen had finished their work, half the enemy force lay dead. A Teuton in the Chancellor's retinue expressed some disgust at this mechanistic and repetitive slaughter of men, to which the Chancellor replied, paraphrasing an earlier Bavarian General, "Why stab a man, if he'll throw himself on your knife?"

With the bowmen out of ammunition, the Chancellor ordered his army down the hill to finish the Turks. The army went down both sides.

The left flank.

The right flank.

Envelopment and destruction.

Kasim of Kabul, having doomed his men with indecision, fled the field. He was one of the few Turks to make it out of the battle. Perhaps wishing that no one would hear of his incompetence, he refused a ransom offer. The survivors were put to the sword.

Chancellor Matthias moved further east after the victory and built a watchtower near the border with the Turks. This was Imperial land, it had been claimed, consecrated in the blood of the fallen, and it would be defended.