It's a shame to see this hasn't generated any replies so far.

All I can say in our defence is that this is a video-game support forum, not a history forum. Most of the talk you will see here is how to beat the AI in battle, how to beat other real people, in multiplayer, what units go well against what other units and so on.

I'm not a great one for books, more of a telly addict but we have whole satellite-TV channels dedicated entirely to history now, so there's plenty of pre-digested material out there about how various historical battles were fought and won.

This suggests to me that written sources are in plentiful supply and lots of detail was recorded in writing whilst the events were still fresh in the memory of the battle's survivors. Either that or it was a case of an oral history surviving for many generations and only later being written down for the record. In the latter case there's more room for speculation, rumour, tall tales and out and out fabrication.

As always, the caveat about 'history is always written by the winners' applies with things like this. A general can always brag about his exploits in his memoirs and claim that this or that tactic was used to great effect but, for all we know, it could have been a giant tactical blunder, on the part of their opponent, or poor morale amongst the enemy troops, on that day, which brought about a famed victory.

Not that the losing sides never get their chance to have a say. Even the Viking raids on England, in the late 800's were written about, perhaps because of attacks being directed at monasteries in particular, partly in search of treasure and partly reaction to a rival faith. Whilst the majority of the people had no use for literacy, the monks could read and write, so the events were recorded contemporaneously and in considerable detail.