Well, rebellions are a problem because his troops have been worn down to very low numbers and Scotland is a very rebellious province, but the main worry is the French. The control the rest of Britain and are at war with me. He's sucessfully held off two determined attacks despite being heavily, heavily outnumbered and out gunned, but the last ine he only just held on by the skin of his teeth.

You know you're in a truely desperate situation you form your Vanilla archers up into a Wedge to send into hand to hand as your best attacking unit! That's what it came down to before the french retreated last time...

But, this win did earn him an automatic leap from skilled defender to Field Defense Expert and he got the super cool and rare Skilled Poor Odds Defender virtue as well. Besides, I've grown attatched to him and he's done a fantastic job with the few resources available to him so I fell I owe him.

Because he's trapped in Scotland and has nowehere to retreat to, if I abandon the province he'll automatically be captured and ransomed. The other option is to set him up on the map edge and withdraw him at the start of the battle but send the rest of this remaining forces into the fight to kill a few Frenchies - should also keep the total ransom amount down.

From memory, Withdrawing doesn't trigger the Good Runner vice.

Interesting but unrelated point: If I have a unit with heaps of armour or weapon upgrades thats taken losses, and I retrain it in a province with no armourer, the new unit coems out with all the armour of the original unit! However, If I build another vanilla version of the unit in the same province, I cant merge them because they have incompatible upgrades. So, in low tech provinces it pays to retrain units rather than build and merge - it's like having the armourer buildings without having to build them.