Swiss Arms 76 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 76

-VB-

Rudolf I

Duke of Upper Bavaria

What was that?

Something happened behind the frontlines and then … the sound of a violent gale slammed into his back through his armor. It stalled the charge, and everyone looked around in confusion, including him. And when he turned around, he saw fire.

Fire had spread out from the center of his army and … and …

Where di it come from?

He looked up when he saw something from the corner of his eyes and his eyes widened when he noticed fire arrows streaking out from the forests!

‘The baron wasn’t just waiting for me. He was prepared to fight me!’

No wonder he was confident! The entire valley had been made into the baron’s playground, and he walked into it without a single thought about how a noble killing, honorless cur might fight!

And that’s when he felt a chill run up his spine.

Count Killer.

That was the baron’s nickname. A disdainful name that ignored all of the customs and rules of war.

‘He’s going to kill me.’

A cold sweat broke out all over his body.

Was this all a trap in the first place? This kind of fire trap was not something you could use-.

“He burned down the Toggensburg castle.”

But the baron was used to handling the fire.

This had to be a trap for him!

All of this had been a trap! The letters, the bandits, the merchants! All of it was a trap from the start!

He gritted his teeth.

And if this was a trap meant to kill him, then his priority was to escape. The baron wasn’t even the priority. His “Compact” wasn’t the priority. His priority was to find the bastards that set this trap from the start … since the merchant guilds of Munich went rogue.

But the problem right now was the baron and his soldiers barreling down toward him.

“To me, men!” he roared as he pulled at the reins of his horse. His voice cut through the sound of fighting and fire, but his words didn’t reach everyone.

And t-.

Something moving fast caught his eyes and he turned to look just in time to see the baron reach the peak of his jump. He soared high above the heads and even some of the speartips.

When did the baron jump that high? How did he jump that high?

And then the baron was falling. Falling towards him with his “sword.”

“Spears up!” someone shouted from his left, and three dozen spears hastily rose up asynchronously. “Jumping into us by yourself?! You will die like a fool, baron!”

And then his eyes widened in shock and disbelief as the baron spun in the air with his sword, cut through the spear shafts before he was hit by the tips, and came down upon one of his men-at-arms. The monstrous blade tore through the soldier, bisecting him from shoulder to hit, and sent the two parts tumbling away.

There was not a moment to react because the baron was soon upon the rest, hacking and slicing with that slab of metal.

“Kill him!” Rudolf ordered.

But then the baron grabbed one of the spears lunged toward him, pulled the spear free from the attacker, whirled it around, grabbed it by the shaft, took aim, and threw.

It happened so quickly that he couldn’t react before that spear was sailing past him and struck one of his soldiers. He whirled around, jerking away in shock, and gawked in horror when he saw his page pinned to the ground with a spear through his helmet and head.

And then …

That’s when the rest of the baron’s army crashed into his disorganized frontline.

Spears so evenly lined up that Rudolf felt envious for a split second skewered into his men, and crossbowmen hiding behind and between the spearmen fired their loads without even reloading! Some of his men-at-arms went down with a spear in the gut and crossbow bolts in the neck and chest. Some went down even before meeting the enemy with a bolt to the face. Others screamed as they fell to the side when bolts struck them in the legs and arms.

KA-THOONG!

There was another explosion of wind and sound as fire erupted once more, and Rudolf even saw half a man flying away from the force of the explosion.

And from atop his horse, he could see the flanks of his army start to disintegrate as normal crossbow bolts rained down from the steep-sloped and dense forests. His soldiers tried to rush up the forests, but it was too dark in there and they couldn’t see any hint of where the attacks were coming from.

‘It’s alright. I still outnumber him by far-!’

“MILORD!”

He whirled around toward the sound and saw the baron.

He was swinging.

At him.

Rudolf roared as he dodged, and barely got himself out of the way of the vertical down strike.

His horse was not as lucky.

The steel bit into Charles’s neck and then sliced cleanly through.

Rudolf hastily tried to get off but Charles’s dying body, spasming and writhing in its death throes, threw him off instead, and he flailed and screamed as he found himself briefly in the air before landing on the muddied grass below with an oomph.

He groaned as he tried to get up. He put his right hand on the muddied ground and tried to push up,

There was a sudden splatter, and he blinked as he realized that there was suddenly a lot of blood droplets on his gauntlets and the grass around him where there wasn’t just a moment ago.

Rudolf pushed himself around.

His heart froze when he saw a giant standing among pillars of legs and stom-.

Oh, those were just his soldiers.

“A- AAAHHHHH!!!!” he screamed as he scrambled up and ran for his life.

Then he tripped after only taking five steps.

He heard something hissing as it sailed past where his back had just been. He faceplanted into the mud and got back up, gasping for air, an-.

He stopped and trembled as he saw a line of death before him. Soldiers got out of the way of a dozen bodies slowly falling or already fallen with the very last soldier at the very end of it gurgling as he fell backward with the giant sword imbedded up to the hilt through his chest, taking up more width of the man’s chest than it didn’t occupy.

“For a lord that was so sure of his victory, that was a rather girlish scream.”

It was the baron.

The thing that killed a dozen soldiers by throwing a sword that must weigh as much as a man was the baron himself!

He turned around on his trembling arms because his legs had given out and refused to move.

The baron stood over him, no more than two or three steps away from him.

Behind him, Rudolf saw his vaunted men-at-arms falling to the spears of the commoners. Why weren’t they winning?!

Then … a ray of hope.

One of his generals, Count Jacob of Rosenheim, charged into the fray and stabbed his sword toward the baron.

The baron casually parried the longsword with his left gauntlet in a upward motion and then, in a smooth motion transitioning from the parry, brought his arm around and punched the count with a snap of his arm.

The count, who had gotten too close, couldn’t block in time and took the punch to his helmet. There was a loud clang and the squeal of twisting metals. The helmet caved under the armored fist and sprayed out blood from all openings for just a moment.

The count stumbled back one step, two steps, and then fell over backward. He did not move.

Rudolf nearly pissed himself.

“Monster!” he shouted at the baron.

The baron silently picked up the sword the count had dropped, and no one stopped him. Between the peasant spearmen creeping ever closer and the fear the man had instilled in his soldiers, no one moved to take advantage of the baron stooping down to pick up the sword.

Once he had the sword, he was even more dangerous.

And when the baron raised his sword up while glaring down at him…

“I SURRENDER!”

-VB-

Analysis of the Battle of Lower Engandin.

Taking place on September 13, 1303, this battle was the first and only battle fought between Rudolf I of Upper Bavaria and Hans von Fluelaberg of the Compact.

At first glance, this battle should have been won by Rudolf I, the co-ruler of the Duchy of Upper Bavaria. The duke brought 5,700 soldiers, a fifth of which were his personal men-at-arms along with half of his knights. Against the then-baron’s eight hundred and fifty-three soldiers, of which less than two hundred were his well-trained rangers, the duke should have overwhelmed a cavalry-less, “ill-equipped” army (Halrsen, 20**). Of the rest of his army, another three-fifths were made up of men-at-arms of nobles the duke had called to the fight. Again, this meant that over three thousand and five hundred troops were men-at-arms with documents stating that there may have also been at least a hundred knights.

This turned out not to be the case for seven reasons:

One, the baron had an army equipped with superior equipment, namely their longer spears. Compared to the six to eight-foot-long (1.8 meters to 2.4 meters) spears used commonly by levy soldiers, men-at-arms, and knights of most armies, the baron gave his soldiers ten-foot-long (~3 meters) spears (Harlsen, 20**).

Second, while individual men-at-arms were better trained and equipped than any of the baron’s soldiers except the baron himself, the average training time for the regular soldiers of the baron’s army was only marginally less than that of the men-at-arms and significantly longer than that of the levy soldiers. This meant that the baron’s soldiers were capable of acting in formation and in concert with their comrades. This comparison did not apply to the men-at-arms of the lesser nobles and knights who had joined the duke; their soldiers were all inferior to the baron’s.

Third, the duke’s army force marched across unfamiliar territory. In a normal military march, soldiers would march for some time, rest, and then march again. This pattern would repeat until they either arrived at their destination, a skirmish or a battle broke out, or night fell and marching became impossible. It is currently estimated that the duke had force marched his army with an average pace of six kilometers per hour over four hundred kilometers. He did not allow them breaks during the day. This meant that the army’s strength had been significantly reduced by the time they met von Fluelaberg’s army on an uphill slope.

Fourth, the geography favored the Compact. The Lower Engadin valley, for those who have been there, is typical of many valleys in the Eastern Alps: narrow, steep cliffs, heavily forested, fast-flowing river, and lower atmospheric oxygen than Bavaria. Specifically, there is a 3% difference in oxygen from 20% at Munich down to 17% and lower at the site of the battlefield. While this is not much of a difference, this is still half the oxygen difference a “lowlander” might experience in Cusco. For the uninitiated, this means that the air is thinner up in the Alps and makes breathing harder to the point that modern Swiss people’s hemoglobin count in those peaks are ~3% harder than those living below 500 meters above sea level, which Munich and its surrounding flat lands are barely above.

Combined with the previously mentioned force march exhaustion, the duke’s army was not just exhausted but also incapable of restoring their stamina at the same rate as their commander expected and needed. This, combined with the fact that they had been on a force march on an ever-rising uphill, across raging rivers, and cold wind.

Fifth, part of the reason why the duke was insistent on force marching was because the land belonged to a potentially hostile duke with more power and influence than the Duchy of Upper Bavaria, which Duke Rudolf did not even control completely: Henry, the Count of Tyrol, Landgrave of Carniola, Duke of Carinthia, and the future King of Bohemia. While then-Duke Henry did not have a personal problem with Duke Rudolf, Henry’s cousin, Isabella of Gorizia, was married to Baron Hans, and Rudolf lied about who he was going to fight. Duke Henry already knew, however, because of frequent contact between him and his cousin, who alerted him to the problems between the baron and the bavarian duke. Duke Henry decided to send information ahead, which resulted in the baron having time to prepare.

Sixth, the baron had time to prepare. He picked the perfect area for a smaller army to fight a larger one. He prepared traps, positioned his troops, and waited. This waiting gave his troops the rest and time they needed to calm themselves for a confrontation against the duke’s larger army.

The seventh and final reason, the baron, then already known for his martial prowess, aimed straight for the duke and managed to capture him, putting an end to the battle less than fifteen minutes into the fight.

However, in these fifteen minutes, the baron’s army slew one hundred fifty men-at-arms at the frontline, the traps killed another one hundred, and his rangers, who had waited in the dense forests to either side of the valley, killed another fifty. In return, the duke’s army had killed less than ten. The trap, documented as fire in some records and feces in others, eventually led to the deaths of nearly five hundred before they returned to Munich.

The capture and humiliating defeat…