[M2TW AAR]: Vignette III - HRE

[AussieGiant]

Mr Beefeater,

Excellent work as usual sir.

Can I ask a favour. Can you post a pic of the empire before each section?

Due to the fact your all over the place like a dogs breakfast I am having trouble keeping up with who and where :)

Due to all the pending intrigue I'd like to know the "lay of the land" so to speak.

Once again fanatastic stuff.

[Quillan]

Beef, if you're hosting on Imageshack, after you've got it hosted, it'll give you three pieces of code to use for linking the image. Pick either of the two that start with [ URL=... and click on that, then copy the highlighted text. Just paste it into your post. That'll give you a clickable thumbnail image linked to the fullsized one. As an example, here's one I took earlier tonight. It was intended to show the massive range of culverins, but the cursor doesn't show in the screenshot. The code is this:

{URL=https://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=culverinspg2.jpg]{IMG]https://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5528/culverinspg2.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

except the opening { has to be replaced with [ and the result is this:

[Lord Magus]

Can I ask a favour. Can you post a pic of the empire before each section?

Yeah, do this please :)
I love your stories ^_^

[The Teacher]

brilliant stuff keep up the good work!

[Beefeater]

Thanks to Quillan for advice on Coding, and to Wizzie for info on how to produce forum-sized images in the future.

I'll start each future post with a picture of the Empire as requested, so we can watch it spread across Europe (or shrink if that's what happens...)

[Lord Magus]

Small question...
What does "Vignette" mean?

[Basileus]

Small question...
What does "Vignette" mean?

A short story if im not mistaken.

[Shahed]

Sehr schön mein Herr !!!.

[AussieGiant]

Thanks to Quillan for advice on Coding, and to Wizzie for info on how to produce forum-sized images in the future.

I'll start each future post with a picture of the Empire as requested, so we can watch it spread across Europe (or shrink if that's what happens...)

Veilen Dank fuer die Empire Pictures Herr Beefeater.

Gruss Gott
AG

[Beefeater]

WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS

June 18, 1104

Arrived at dawn. The Venetian sentries were tired and careless. Left the captains behind and hurried to the Emperor. I needn’t have bothered. He has little time for clerks. Little time for any man whose tailor doesn’t work in iron. Brains of iron too.

Watched the battle from a distance. We won. Rejoicing &c. Kleiben had done his job well: before Heinrich’s men took the city, Kleiben’s cutthroats had visited the homes of the grander families. The wiser turned to us. The difficult or obtuse had accidents.

Taxes arrived in a rush. Occupying armies encourage this response.

The story so far…


The HRE, Turn 10

Heinrich’s rule has been good to the HRE, and the Reich now sprawls from France, through Italy, and out onto the wooded hills of Bohemia. This has been a blessing to Germany’s nobles, who have greedily fanned out to claim new lands, and an even greater blessing to Imperial cartographers, armed with an excuse to provide new maps every few years.


Kingdoms of Germany

Atop the great pyramid of squabbling nobles sit the Hohenzollerns, who have divided up the empire into their respective spheres of influence. Kaiser Heinrich rules directly over the Reich’s Italian and Alpine possessions: Staufen, Innsbruck, Bologna, Florence, and in all probability very soon Venice are his to dispose of as he pleases. Heinrich’s lands are outlined in red-pink on the Kingdoms map.

His eldest son, Prince Henry, has made the fertile Rhine Valley his power base, and sits in his fortress at Metz. His lieutenant Dietrich von Saxony, a man of unimpeachable honesty and valour, governs over Frankfurt, titular capital of Germany. Henry has also taken steps to fortify his position by sending Jan Von Tyrolia, a somewhat shady protégé, to govern the Osterreich from Vienna. Henry’s domain is outlined in gold.

Finally, the King’s other son Leopold now rules over Bohemia. His, rather smaller, holdings are outlined in blue. Leopold does not in fact control Nuremberg directly – that honour goes to the increasingly cruel Graf Mandorf – but Mandorf still acknowledges Leopold as his master, and can be assumed to be supporting his cause. The map is actually slightly misleading – the Poles do not hold Breslau, it is in fact Leopold’s fortress. There is, however, a Polish army wandering the region. Leopold is preparing for war.

Gesta Germanorum

A Polish attack would be only the second war that the Reich, for all its many borders, is involved in. At present Heinrich’s army is well advanced in its siege of Venice, and the city will fall next turn. There is thought to be at least one, perhaps two Venetian armies still active, but neither is expected to be a great threat.

True to form, the Venetians sallied forth as their supplies ran out. The battle that followed was short and utterly one-sided. Half-starved, outnumbered and demoralised, the defenders barely managed a single ragged charge before Heinrich’s professional killers trampled them in the dust.


Where Angels fear to tread

As his men plunder Venice, Kaiser Heinrich summons his lieutenants to him and makes a surprising announcement. He is to recognize one of his bastards as a third son. The man in question, Thorsten der Stoltze, was sired in Bologna during a youthful indiscretion, and thirty years of warm Italian sun have given him a pleasant and easygoing demeanour that made him a welcome playmate of Prince Henry in their childhoods, and the Prince sends his warmest congratulations on the news.


Ein Neue Mann

Leopold is less thrilled by this turn of events. As second son his position is quite precarious enough thanks to his elder brother’s installation of his own man in Leopold’s former capital of Vienna, without some parvenu Italian muscling in on the remains of Leopold’s patrimony. While the rest of the royal family winter in Alsace or Venice, Leopold is left ruling the harsh, barely Christian wildlands between Prague and Warsaw. Marauding bands of Polish nobles thunder across the steppe in open defiance of his rule, raising the question of how long peace can be maintained with the HRE’s expanding neighbour.

War and rumours of war are not worldwide, thankfully. The French have been peaceful for many years, and the Hungarians under King Lazlo have proved a strong bulwark against a resurgent Byzantium. The Normans of Sicily have made no trouble lately, and the Milanese have even gone to far as to offer an alliance! Heinrich accepted with alacrity.

Brinkmanship

Finally, it looks like war. A medium sized Polish army ends its move a few days’ march from Leopold’s fortress at Breslau. Spears are raised and helmets donned, and the flags of war are flown from the walls…

…but it was a false alarm. The Polish forces retreat back into Poland.

Back in Venice, Heinrich and Thorsten’s rule is threatened by a huge Venetian army commanded by a minor cousin of the Doge. The Venetians have terrifying siege machines and a multitude of crossbowmen, covered by several units of full mailed knights. It seems that even without his former city, the cunning Italian leader has more than enough money for war.

Heinrich marched out to meet the Venetian host knowing that he was outnumbered and seriously outmatched. However, his Knights and Mounted Sergeants gave him the crucial advantage of enough mobility to strike a crucial hammer blow against the mostly foot-bound Italian militia and mercenaries. Marching swiftly out of the city, Heinrich drew his cavalry up on the Italian flanks.


Forest of lances

This is where things got interesting for me. Shortly after taking the above picture, I selected my cavalry units as a group, and right-clicked the nearest Venetian unit. Not only did each of the cavalry execute a perfect charge, they did so by lapping around the entire Venetian formation (not just the nearest unit), riding past the poor Italians like Apaches round a wagon. It was superbly cinematic – congratulations, CA, on a first-rate graphics engine.

It hardly needs saying, but the Venetians were taken completely by surprise (they had just started moving toward the city at this point, but were shuffling around so didn’t displace the German charge.) Eventually, the Venetian cavalry made their numbers felt and the Imperial flanking force had to withdraw, but by that point Heinrich’s main force of spearmen had taken up positions around the depleted Italian forces.


Enfilade

The spearmen charged in, and all was over. Barely fifteen Venetians escaped the field of battle, and their heartless Doge refused to ransom the wounded.

Next Steps

Now that the main Venetian army was destroyed, the path to final victory in this war was over. Heinrich spent a few turns in Venice building up his forces, and prepared to march along the coast towards the Adriatic stronghold of Ragusa. Only with Venice gone could the rising power of Milan could be addressed – they had the turn before overtake the HRE as the nation with the largest army.

Before Heinrich could attend to these matters, a second Venetian army, a tiny stack of five units led by the Doge’s son and heir, laid siege again to the city. Heinrich prepared to brush them aside.

November 12, 1112

A cold morning, by Italian standards. I shall be glad to leave here and return to Germany again, where even a three-year old child knows to stopper the door up to keep the cold at bay.

Dispatched my report to Mandorf. The man grows more vicious by the month , but that is understandable. Leopold still locked in that henhouse of a castle by Breslau. Our star is hardly in the ascendant, but at least with Heinrich on the throne Prince Henry’s faction is kept in check.

The Venetian force has shrunk again. Paid a local urchin to find out why. Seems they are deserting rather than face Heinrich’s knights. Also not surprising: the bakers, grocers and apprentices that make up Italian armies would do better to stick to their trades rather than trying to fight professional warriors like Heinrich’s. The Kaiser will attack them tomorrow. With this force gone, the way to Ragusa is clear.

Thorsten came to my chambers to drink with me. Sly. What does he want I wonder? I am too old to be talked into sharing my knowledge with him like a blushing seminarian, and if he thought to make me drunk and read my papers, I fear he should learn little from them, even if he can read.

He left soon after. Followed him, but a servant nearly saw me in the East wing so I doubled back, and on my return he was gone. He had no reason to be there. I shall write of this to Mandorf.

November 13, 1112.

There is little time to write now. In an inn in the mountains, half-way to Innsbruck, and if the Lord favours me I shall be in the Castle by dawn. My fingers are numb from cold and my limbs numbed with weariness, but I have a room to myself and that for now is enough.

Heinrich rode out this morning to face the Venetian army. Knights and sergeants in gleaming array etc. He spoke briefly with me.

“Write this in your books, clerk. On..May, 14, Year of our Lord 1112, Kaiser Heinrich killed the mangy son of that Venetian hound, and the hopes of Venice died that day. Think you can manage that?”

Not waiting for my answer, he strode off. Giant man, like Gog or Magog. Something wrong, a nagging doubt. Not important. I returned to the Dovecote to report. From there, I could make out the battle faintly. There was a brief skirmish between the Doge’s son and Heinrich’s knights before the Italian was taken prisoner. True to his word, Heinrich slew the youth without asking quarter, and the Venetian army crumbled soon after. Heinrich, Thorsten and their knights charged off to pursue the stragglers.

Strolling back to my chambers I happened to pass through the East wing, past the Milanese ambassador’s quarters, and into the kitchens. Fool that I was! Remembered my doubts then, yes, remembered and swore and ran to my horse.

Found Heinrich in the woods near the road, or what was left of him. Thorsten had led the Kaiser into a Milanese ambush, not that it had stopped the Italians butchering the both of them, with their guards also. He wanted money? No, already wealthy. Power in Italy, his own little Kingdom? No. Thorsten was never independent. Henry’s doing, probably, thirsty to rule and swelling with the desire for war with France. If I survive to return to Mandorf, I shall head for Breslau. A castle in Poland would be safer than this inn.

I hear men downstairs. Maybe Henry’s. Maybe the Milanese. I’ll sleep in the barn tonight, and leave before dawn.

The nights are growing colder.


A new era.

[Shahed]

toll !

[Naefen]

Joining the forums today

I have played Total War since the first Medieval game and think its the best strategy games out there.

Just HAD TO pop in here and say how much I enjoy Beefy`s vignettes. Great work!!

Currently playing HRE aswell. Im eagerly waiting for your next post