Chapter 15
January 26th, 1665. Bickenstadt.
A unit of Imperial light cavalry were out scouting away from their main army. They were searching the countryside for villages to raid, as well as checking for the main force of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces.
In the distance they could see a group of men approaching them, about the same number as them but very different in dress. The light cavalrymen could make out their massive shakos from hundreds of yards away, a type of headdress that Imperials didn’t use.
The officer raised his saber and pointed towards the strange group of what they assumed were allies of Bickenstadt.
“Let’s get them men!”
His men cheered and they rode hard at their approaching enemy, who appeared to do the same. As they got closer more and more details could be made out, like the strange skeleton-like decorations across their chest. However, something that made the Imperials ride even harder forward was their pointy ears. This was a unit of degenerate elves come to assist the race traitors in despoiling their beloved nation.
The two sides cheered as they approached, and both units could see the whites of their enemy’s eyes. Imperials and elves raised their sabers high in the air and slashed down as they reached each other, beginning a wild melee in the plains of Bickenstadt.
An Imperial slashed at an elven hussar, who dodged in his saddle and swiped back almost faster than he could defend against. The Imperial had barely managed to bring his saber back to block when the hussar attacked from another angle, slashing and thrusting with a speed and accuracy that shocked the Imperials. He raised his saber and the hussar lunged forward in his saddle, flicking over the man's guard and piercing the Imperial through the neck.
Hussars attacked with speed and precision that only came with hundreds of years of experience. Their weapons danced around their enemy’s guard, biting into unprotected flesh and sending jets of blood flying through the air.
In mere moments a dozen Imperials had fallen, and the hussars had yet to even be scratched. Their expertise and level of experience was unmatched anywhere in the world, the elven hussars were simply in a completely different league than the Imperial light cavalry whose only real experience came from raiding villages and scattering militia.
The Imperial office blew a whistle and the Imperial light cavalry began to retreat. The hussars simply stood in place, laughing and shouting obscenities all the while. The Imperials cursed and rode hard, hoping that they wouldn’t be pursued by an enemy far better than they were.
The hussars turned in their place and rode back to their camp, a massive sprawling mess of tents right outside Bickenstadt city. They extended out as far as the eye can see, thousands upon thousands of men crowded into a single camp.
A hussar rode through and found the commander’s tent, dismounting and running inside.
“Général Falsen, enemy light cavalry seen closeby. We gave them a bloody nose, but their presence suggests their main force is getting closer.”
The old man in front of him, a Bickenstadter named Gerhard Falsen, nodded.
“Then we will mobilize. Spread the word.”
The hussar gave him an elven salute before running off.
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January 27th, 1665.
The men of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces marched through the countryside in neat columns. They passed by refugees from the Empress’s raids across Bickenstadt. Entire families had been displaced, and even more had been slaughtered outright without mercy. A soldier watched as an old man hobbled past, a nasty, fresh, angry looking scar across his face.
The soldiers felt a growing rage as they watched the displaced stumbling past them, some barely alive, all in rough shape after running for hours on end. They resolved to push these monstrous slavers out of their province, for the sake of their friends and families, and for the sake of those who had no means to protect themselves.
Falsen rode in front of them, shaking his head as he watched people pass by.
“Men, when you enter battle, remember who put them in this situation!”
A hussar rode to General Falsen and gave him an elven salute.
“Général! Enemy twelve miles east, moving in our direction along the road. At the rate they’re moving, we will meet them in an abandoned village along the road.”
Falsen thought for a moment.
“Then we will meet them there.”
He turned in his saddle to face his columns.
“Men! Doubletime it!”
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“Général! They will be ‘ere within ten minutes!”
Falsen nodded.
“Good, good.”
The men spread out around the village, marching with their companies around to find advantageous positions. Each man made sure they were loaded and their bayonets were attached and sharp.
Men poured into houses and readied themselves for the upcoming fight, joking around with each other and generally making a ruckus as they tried to steady their nerves. Falsen had set up in a house in the center of the village, using it as a fortified command post.
He was looking over the map of Bickenstadt, moving pieces around, deciding where exactly he wanted the parts of his army to be. The ten thousand men in the village were just a small portion of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces, with the rest of it split up and finding areas that the Imperials would have to march through so that they could meet them there, or running around chasing Imperial raiding parties to keep Bickenstadt villages relatively safe.
He wished he had Fergus and his Berzerkeri, but they were busy raiding supply lines, their work was essential as it was him and his men that prevented the Imperials from crossing Bickenstadt into Leibenstadt during the siege of Freiderick. The elven regiments were also elsewhere, minus the hussars that had decided to stay with the general as a bodyguard.
Soon Imperial light cavalry could be seen off in the distance. They decided to not get too close, lest they end up engaged with the elven hussars. Instead they just fired their carbines from far outside their effective range, mostly just to get something, anything, down range. Not a single bullet found its mark, but they weren't expected to.
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Then, Imperial columns could be seen in the distance, swiftly making their way towards the unnamed town in the plains of Bickenstadt. Their columns were neat, densely packed, and impeccably organized. There was no sign of the Demigryph knights, which was a good thing, however it did not mean the battle would be easy.
Bickenstadters gripped their muskets as they watched the Imperials draw closer, able to see individual men in the massive throng of Imperials. Bickenstadt skirmishers, personally trained by Helmut Freier, moved to meet the Imperial’s Bvarian Jaegers.
The Bvarians marched in pairs, while the Bickenstadters simply marched in a conventional open order formation. At 200 yards the Bvarians kneeled and carefully aimed their shots before firing, each pair erupting in a cloud of smoke simultaniously.
A few Bickenstadters fell and those that remained kneeled, aimed their rifles, and fired. A few pairs of Bvarians fell, but most kneeled there completely untouched and unconcerned about the fire they were taking. Bvarian Jaegers loaded and fired far faster than the Bickenstadters were expecting, as they had spent their entire lives hunting in the rough mountains of Bvaria.
More bullets ripped through the Bickenstadt open order formation, creating small gaps that were swiftly filled by the men behind. They slowly loaded their rifles, hammering the bullets down the incredibly tight barrels. By the time they had reloaded the Bvarians had unleashed five shots each and downed dozens of men.
Behind them the Imperials marched ever closer, and soon the Bickenstadters decided to retreat, taking a surprising amount of casualties from such a great distance. The Bvarians continued to fire a steady stream of lead at a surprisingly high rate, walking and loading at once as the Bickenstadt skirmishers ran to the safety of the village.
The 2nd Corps of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces had marched hard and fast, so their relatively slow artillery pieces were left behind, meaning they had no cannons. However, the Imperials had done the same thing, so they didn’t have artillery either. So far as Falsen could tell, they had roughly equal numbers, with a slight advantage for the Imperials. With the Bickenstadters dug into the village, Falsen believed that they had the overall advantage.
Bvarian bullets smashed into wooden houses, keeping Bickenstadt heads down and covering the approach of the rest of the Imperial forces, numbering fifteen thousand in all. Elven hussars rode around and fired at the Bvarians, downing twenty men in a single volley. The Bvarians retreated, not wanting to engage with cavalry in such a spread out formation, and without bayonets mounted.
The hussars rode closer to the enemy and fired off their shots, hitting a few men with each volley. Imperials fired back, but completely missed their shots, or had their shots dodged by the expert elven warriors.
The Imperials drew closer to the village and soldiers in the homes began to fire out windows. Bvarian sharpshooters fired into the windows, killing a few soldiers at a time. Imperials picked up their pace and ran in their columns, knowing that there was no artillery for them to worry about. They could move as densely packed as they wanted, and a column was generally more manueverable than a line.
Companies wheeled around the houses and aimed their muskets at the approaching Imperials, waiting for the order to fire. As soon as they entered 100 yards, sabers dropped through the air, and the village erupted in smoke. They didn’t even pause to check if their shots hit before loading again, getting off another shot as the enemy entered 50 yards.
They readied themselves to absorb the charge when the Imperial columns stopped. They aimed and fired as a single, unified body. Dozens of Bickenstadters dropped and the Imperials began to yell at the top of their lungs as they charged. The Bickenstadters tried to fill their gaps, but the Imperials had picked the perfect distance to fire.
The Imperials slammed into the Bickenstadters outside the houses, who were almost immediately scattered by the superior force. Falsen’s eyes bulged as he watched his men fold like a house of cards. He leaned out his window and shouted.
“Reform your lines! If you break you’ll be run down!”
The men didn’t listen, continuing to run out of the village, making their way back home towards Bickenstadt. Falsen cursed and told his staff to gather their things and sound the retreat. The battle had already been lost, a full eight companies had already been broken.
“Out of the houses! We’re going to do a fighting retreat men!”
Men rushed out of their houses but were intercepted by Imperials and slaughtered. A Bickenstadter thrust his bayonet when he was parried and ran through by three men. The men next to him all met similar fates, killed by the wave of Imperials crashing into them.
Falsen ran to his horse and mounted it when out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. The last thing his brain was able to process was the shine of sunlight reflecting off a saber as it soared through the air, right towards his neck.
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Elven hussars ran themselves ragged trying to cover the retreating forces. An elf quickly aimed and fired at a light cavalryman, killing him instantly before immediately working on reloading, trusting his stirrups to keep him in his saddle.
Light cavalry and hussars stared at each other, each one daring the other to make a move. Behind the hussars was a mass of soldiers running in rough columns, barely maintaining any cohesion thanks to the hard work of the various officers and NCOs of individual companies.
“Stay together you fucking idiots! You’ll be picked off if you don’t!”
Bvarian Jaegers fired at the retreating men, running back into the protection of their horsemen whenever hussars got a little too close.
All the men had to do was survive long enough to link up with their allies and they would be left alone. A Bickenstadter fell as a bullet ripped through his shoulder and his comrade immediately picked him up, putting the man’s arm over his shoulder and helping him hobble forward.
The second Corps was bleeding men, and they had given up the village almost without a fight. They thought that the Imperials were weak, only able to kill women and children and burn down old widow’s houses, however they were a serious, competent fighting force. A lesson that the Bickenstadters paid for in blood.
A hussar and a light cavalryman passed by each other, sabers flashing. The light cavalryman slumped in his saddle as he weakly tried to cover the gaping wound on his neck. The hussar held his slashed forearm and groaned, saber dangling from the small cord wrapped around his wrist.
The first hussar fell as a Bvarian bullet punched a massive hole in his skull. A second later the Jaeger was filled with bullets as the fallen elf’s comrades roared in anger. They charged at the Imperials and slaughtered them within seconds, cutting off heads and arms of light cavalry and running down Bvarian Jaegers.
Bullets whizzed past as a hussar leaped forward, slicing down at a man and slamming him into the ground with the force of a charging horse behind his swing. He continued forward and thrust through the neck of a light cavalryman, slapping his thrust aside with his off hand at the same time.
The scouts and light cavalry began to scatter as the hussars tore through them, screaming elven war chants all the while. The hussars whooped and hollered at the retreating Imperials, jumping up and down in their saddles.
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Leibenstadt.
The Baron sat atop his horse, riding alongside his men as they marched to Bickenstadt. The coalition had split slightly, with some of the Brayherd forces and all of the Waffenstadt forces heading east towards Weinstadt and Bvarian.
At the pace the coalition was moving, they would arrive in Bickenstadt in three days. Four days of nonstop marching. The Baron sighed.
“We’ll need time to rest before we engage the Empress.”
In the distance the Baron could see an unfamiliar figure riding towards him. They wore a shako, something which no one in the Empire wore.
An elf?
The hussar drew closer and closer before saluting the Baron. His men were nervous looking at this unfamiliar man riding so quickly towards them, but the Baron looked unconcerned, and it was only a single man.
“Général! The second corps of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces ‘ave been scattered!”
The Baron gritted his teeth.
“Damn!”
“What are your orders, Général?”
The Baron bit his thumbnail as he thought.
“...I want the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces to refrain from any large-scale engagements until I arrive. You are one of the elven hussars, yes?”
The hussar nodded.
“If you could show our light cavalry how it’s done I would be eternally grateful. Skirmish with the Imperials, make sure that every step they take is paid for in blood! The thing we need most now is time! Buy us as much as you can!”