Medieval Hamburger Hill, 1405

Turks: 1 stack (1 gen, 1 qapukulu, 2 Sipahi HA, 4 Jan. Archers, 4 Ottoman Inf., 6 JHI, 2 cannon)

Hunagrians: 2 stacks, 1 reinforcement stack (1 gen, all others are a mix of crossbow militia, DFK, various types of mounted knights, and supporting bombards and trebuchets).

Attacking up the Dalmation coast against the Hungarians, I ended my Sultan's army's turn on the inland side of the mountain ridge running down the coast. The Hungarians immediatel sent 3 full stacks against this 1 stack and attacked me where I ended my turn.

They couldn't have attacked me at a worse spot. I was on top of a steep rocky hill with two grades, probably about 35 degrees up halfway and 25-30 degrees the rest of the way up. The rocky nature of the hill presented the Hungarians with only 2 ways up the hill, 2 draws that eventually met together before where I positioned my army, much like an inverted "Y".

As the Hungarians at the bottom of the hill formed up for an assault, my cannons opened fire on their artillery. My gold-striped cannons shot accurately and made quick work out of their artillery, even before the hungarian infantry finished forming up. With the artillery out of the way, I shelled the now slowly advancing hungarians with impunity.

Their 2 starting stacks formed up at the bottom of the hill directly in front of the two draws leading up to my army, and began to advance, crossbowmen in the fore. Artillery fire was constant this whole time, though I held archer fire till both Hungarian armies met at the intersection of the "Y", halfway up the hill. The grade of the hill becomes slightly less at this point, and from the Turk's perspective, this point is the first point where my Ottoman infantry (in the front rank to make their shots more accurate) will be able to see the full bodies of the advancing Hungarians. Moreover, the intersection was only wide enough to fit 1 army through at a time, so thus both Hungarian stacks began to bunch up dangerously. At this time their third stack appeared and started to immediately move up the hill using the draw on the left.

Once the Hungarians crested over this grade-change, the order to open fire was given to the archers. I don't think I've ever seen so much blood-mist spray or so many men go down in one massive volley. Images of Saving Private Ryan came up in my mind ( reminiscent of the first scene where the boat ramp opens and everyone in the boat is blown away by a MG-42). The front ranks of the hungarians were getting mowed down so fast that their army looked like it was standing still yet they were advancing.

Their cavalry were moving up the hill behind their dismounted knights, so i had to switch to target them. Luckily, as the first volley left, the knights were in the process of moving up through their mass of infantry, so practically every arrow hit something. In a matter of 3 or 4 volleys, all of their knights were dead, along with any infantry standing close to them.

While I was concentrating on the knights, the crossbow militia broke through the bottleneck and deployed in skirmish right in front of my army, ducked down and started to return fire. It really looked like modern soldiers spreading out and taking cover and digging in. However the concentration of arrows was so thick that 1 volley effectively destroyed any skirmishing crossbow unit that made it out of the bottleneck. 1 crossbow militia made it up to my Ottoman infantry, and actually killed 1 ottoman before getting butchered. Someone please give that man a medal.

As the very, very few survivors of the first 2 stacks retreated down the hill (all the while being shot in the back as I turned on fire-at-will now) ran right into the advancing third stack, slowing it somewhat. As soon as the third stack came over the grade-change, all archers and cannon opened up on the lead units. 3 out of 4 cannons got a direct hit right in the center of their mass of men; this may be exaggerated, but I do believe that is the first time I've seen over a hundred men fly through the air. The survivors immediately routed, with my archery fire shooting them up all the way back down the hill.

In the end, there was no more grass that can be seen up the hill, the bodies were piled up perhaps 4-5 high. Hungarian losses came up to just over 5000, while my own losses were 1 killed (the ottoman that got killed) and 2 friendly fire. Of the few crossbow militia that actually fired, not one of them killed any of my men with their crossbows.