I had a victory that left me shaking my head in amazement during a Hard English campaign that I began in Early, having reached Late by forcing myself to stick to GAs plus a few other personal allowances... I can't resist taking Byzantium, Khazar and Sweden.

Anyway, I had an absolutely awesome prince, Prince John, with moderate to high stats, with a Command of 8 including V & Vs, rising to 9 in risky attacks, plus he was a Famous Warrior & Argumentative... only one problem, he was the heir to the throne & I didn't want to suffer the wrapround idiot princes I'd get from a king with such a high Command rating. He had 3 younger brothers: the second oldest being perfect king material with Command 6 & good stats, the next was nothing special, then there was the youngest, the family trouble maker: proud, argumentative (hmmm, a family trait perhaps?) & chinless.

I didn't want to lose my heir, but for the good of the family he had to go. I decided to give him a fun send-off, sending him & his youngest brother alone into Naverre against the Spanish who'd been bugging the hell out of me by attacking my shipping. Both units were full strength Late Royals with +4 Armour & Attack, the Discipline bonus from the Military Academy, and Morale bonuses from the Cathedral and Reliquary after a quick tour of my best troop production provinces - absolute killing machines.

I drop them both on Naverre, facing a mixed bag of some 1700 troops, some rather pathetic depleted remnants of old unit, 3 near full strength Order Foot plus about a dozen full strength & upgraded units led by a small unit of Knights Of Santiago with a 5 star general & no bad V & Vs. There weren't many Jinettes, but there were a lot of Spanish Javelinmen that I knew I'd have to be careful around.

The AI wasted 5 starting slots with artillery - 2 bombards, 2 catapults & a ballista - and were mostly set up on a steep slope with lots of woodland. I want to avoid an unlucky artillery hit, so I send my knights off at a tangent so that the rounds fall behind them, but then cut one unit back, again leaving the Spanish with low-odds high deflection shots, to try & tempt the Spanish into attacking my knights while they're seperated. The lure is too strong and a couple of Jinnette units - the only ones on the map at the start - plus a PA come after me, heading for the younger prince's unit, the one that had changed course. A bit of manouvering & I get the Jinnettes roughly between my 2 knights & set both to charging, ignoring the PA for now. The Jinnettes try to fall back from one knight, but then get spooked by the other, end up dithering while my knights draw ever closer, so that by the time they try to escape back to their lines it's too late; the survivors run away, and although they rally before routing off the map, they don't do anything significant during the remainder of the battle before finally running off. I send the general after the now frantically retreating PAs & the other knights back towards the main Spanish lines to try & lure them out again. The PAs manage to take down a couple of my knights before they break & rout towards the rest of their army, which spurred the rest into action... away from me & further up the slope!? Damned cowards!

I happily finish off the PAs & catch the exposed artillery, but not before a cannon ball or rock manages to flatten a knight... in revenge I slaughter all the prisoners I'd accumulated so far. Closing on the main Spanish forces, who are beginning to receive reinforcements for the destroyed/routed units, I start to slowly suffer casualties from missile fire & melee combat as I begin alternating charges from my knights: slamming one unit into the chosen victim then withdrawing them just before the other unit charges. I occasionally mess up my timing or the Spaniards ensnare me with a counterattack, but overall it's going well, I'm doing lots of damage & my losses are relatively low.

I then luck out & kill the Spanish general after the Knights Of Santiago finally enter the fray, this causes a few Spaniards to rout. Leaving my now very tired and depleted general's bodyguard to continue battling the remaining KoS plus those units still fighting, I harry the fleeing Spaniards with my younger prince.

The KoS die to the last man and all but a ragged unit of Order Foot waver & rout - the younger prince's unit is having a great time scooping up prisoners, occasionally hammering reinforcements before they can fully deploy, especially whenever I spot javelin units.

I then make a bad mistake, spending too much time trying to micromanage my general, breaking him free & re-charging the stubborn Order Foot to try & rout them. Just as I have them on the ropes, I notice that my other knights have been gutted by something, with just 7 men left. A small unit of Spanish Javelins appears to have caught them in the midst of a melee. I manage to free both of my units from combat and sandwich the javelins, quickly killing, capturing or routing them. I'm now down to my last 10 men, 6 with the general & 4 with the younger prince, so the end looks near although it's been great fun.

The surviving Order Foot come gasping up the hill after me & I decide to vent my fury on them, sending the general into their flank while they're busy with the other unit of royals. This finally routs them & I leave them be, turning on the latest batch of Spanish reinforcements, the first of their arquebusiers finally beginning to appear. I'm feeling drained myself by now, never mind how exhausted my troops are, so I forget fancy tactics & just click on both before selecting the nearest foe.

I start chewing up the arquebusiers, switching to a diet of handgunners & spearmen for variety as more reinforcements trickle in. I'm beginning to think that I might actually be able to win this, even though I'm down to 4 men, 3 of which are in the general's unit - I like to think that the younger prince had survived until this point, but I wasn't using the combat logs, so I'll never know, although the royal chroniclers will tell the appropriate tale of Prince Edward the Potato Head's heroic last battle. My first awareness of the unit with a mere pair of Jinnettes was seeing the solitary royal knight go down. My last 3 knights are trapped in the midst of some FMAA & handgunners, about a dozen of each, & I'm thinking the damned javelins are about to rob me of an unbelievable triumph after all, when the fools charge in instead of standing off! Maybe they'd already used their javelins, or maybe the AI thought they could win hand-to-hand, but it was the last chance for the Spaniards who were soon all fleeing the field with the last 2 bodyguards looking at the prince and gasping, "Sod off, we're not chasing them! You want them, you catch them!"

The prince is feeling moderately grouchy after the loss of his younger brother & the realization that daddy dearest had sent him to his death, so he kills all the prisoners.

I'm sitting there staring numbly at the screen, my 40 knights having killed or routed an army more than 40 times their numbers, although suffering over 90% losses in the process, thinking that my prince had perhaps earned his right to wear the crown after all. I get up to go get a much needed drink, clicking on the end turn button to save time while I'm gone... then feel like sobbing! The Spanish had retreated to their castle which was now being besieged by a mere 3 royal knights. Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh! A couple of clicks confirmed what I already knew... my prince was dead! Poor Prince John, he would have been a legendary warrior king, but instead he probably died from trench foot or dysentery.

Even though I'd intended him to die, volunteering the Spanish as his executioner, I felt the Dons had to pay for the death of my prince, so the next year I started my assault, ignoring the bleatings of the Pope until I grew tired of his flapping tongue and had it removed. I destroyed the Spaniards, laying waste to their lands, leaving not a single building standing, before retreating back to Aquitaine & Toulouse, leaving the French to claim the ghost-haunted Iberian Peninsula.