Battle reports thread - King of the Romans PBM

[econ21]

The battle of the Alpine Fort, 1154 AD

Henry was glad to be out the Diet and back campaigning in the field. He felt both powerless and useless in the Diet. Powerless because his father had exploited a loophole in the Charter to subvert the will of the Electors and have the Empire excommunicated in the course of an old vendetta against the Pope. Useless because Mandorf, the Chancellor, was intelligent and level-headed enough to do everything that could be done to cope with the resulting crisis. Henry had no role, except perhaps as a stand-in should his father fall in his assault on the Pope at Genoa.

So here Henry was, high in the mountains, west of Milan. A fort stood in front of him, small and squat, commanding the Alpine pass.Under his command was the recently formed Household Army of Swabia. By rights, it should have been commanded by Count Sigismund, but the chivalrous leader’s untimely death at a French assassin’s hand had robbed the men of their beloved leader. It was bitterly ironic - the fort had been built by Sigismund himself and now was being used by the French against men who still mourned him. What is more, Sigismund had done his work too well. The compact wooden fort was solidly made and robustly functional, now crammed with over 700 French soldiers.

Henry had over 1100 in the Swabian army, but no obvious way of leveraging his advantage. The walls and density of the defenders neutralised the potential edge that could be provided by the many German cavalry and crossbowmen. That left only the German infantry to be relied upon. Henry did have at his command the Empire’s first regiment of dismounted Feudal knights, but otherwise his men were an undistinguished lot. Henry wondered if he had made a mistake when governing Staufen in not prioritising building barracks to train armoured spearmen. Still his early emphasis on improving the lands had paid off and his home was now the first and only fortress in the Empire.

The Chancellor had ordered three rams to be prepared. Consequently, Henry divided his army into three groups - south, west and east - each with their own ram, as well as a regiment of crossbows, spears and of knights. Henry himself would lead the eastern force, marching north to the rear gate in the hope of enticing the defenders to leave the safety of the fort - as had happened before at Metz. The dismounted knights would support the first assault on the main southern gate. The eastern attack would breach a wall in the hope of overloading the enemy defence.

Unfortunately, the French could not be persuaded to sally out of the fort. Indeed, they retired to the centre of the fort - out of range of the besiegers’ crossbows. The Germans were able to breach the fort in three spots and to enter unopposed, but that still left much bitter fighting before the defenders could be overwhelmed.

The worst of the struggle was in the south, where a regiment of German spearmen was ordered to engage the regiment of mounted French knights garrisoning the fort.

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A mass of French infantry moved to attack the rear of the Germans and soon the spearmen were in danger of being overwhelmed. Belatedly, the Germans committed their dismount feudal knights to confront the mass of French infantry. In a bitter frontal struggle, the German knights fought well - losing a third of their number but killing three times as many as they lost.

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Nonetheless, the dismounted knights were not able to reach the German spearmen engaging the mounted French knights. The mass of French infantry opposed them was simply too great. Caught between that mass and the fine French knights, the German regiment of spearman was gradually whittled down. Eventually, only a handful of survivors remained. They broke and ran, but not before they had left a great pile of dead horses before them.

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As this first regiment of German spears ran, a second - sent from the north gate by Henry arrived to finish off the French knights and their unfortunate Captain.

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Henry himself led his escort through the north gate to support the third breach of the fort - in the east. The French had sent a regiment of spearmen to try to stem the breach, so Henry ordered his bodyguard to attack the rear of this force. Unable to charge, it was a risky tactic to use cavalry against spears, but the alternative was to allow the battle to degenerate into frontal attrition. The armour and experience of the German royal knights gradually told.

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The remainder of the German cavalry, Henry managed to direct into the centre of the fort. The French had moved all of their melee capable infantry out of the centre, into the south or east. Only two regiments of French archers remained. Soon the centre fell, as did the spearmen fighting Henry, leaving only the mass of the French infantry still locked in combat to the south with the dismounted knights. Leaderless, without a central refuge and with a couple of hundred cavalry to their rear, the French infantry soon lost heart.

Henry decided to halt the slaughter - the French had nowhere to run and the new Household Army of Swabia would need every man it could get if it were to continue to avenge Sigismund. Henry ordered the prisoners and wounded well looked after, then road back to meet with the Chancellor who was en route to Milan. Under the principle of a rotating command Henry had outlined for the Swabian army, Count von Salza would be the one to lead it onwards to Rheims. Quite what task the Chancellor would assign Henry, the Prinz was unsure. But in truth, his mind was not on that question. It was focussed to the south, on Genoa, where Henry’s father had trapped the Holy Father and was preparing to kill him without mercy.

The butcher’s bill:

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