The Battle of Montiarigioni
The first major battle against the Homuerto, Montiarigioni also acted to prove the efficacy of a fully professional army.
At the time of the battle, the First Misery had been in full swing for over a year, and the white-eyed invaders showed no signs of being satiated. They had sent no envoys, or demands of cities they'd besieged. Only attacking on sight. Many nations had their armies and by extension their nobility had been decimated before being able to take the field, and they could no longer put up a fight.
Luckily, not all nations were in such dire straights. Some simply wished to wait it out, or lacked the military resources to do anything about it. Some, however, were simply biding their time. Countries like Sonuero had sat back from the action, and allowed it's neighbors to suffer the brunt of it. They had done so with a purpose, however. Using that time to revolutionize military practice.
In the years before the First Misery, even as firearms came into service, and cannons appeared more commonly on the battlefield, armies relied upon their nobility and ruling class to provide military manpower and equipment. Knights and the like. As time has marched forward, we have learned that is not the way to cultivate military prowess or at least not the most efficient way, with Sonuero being the first to try something different.
Instead of relying on bannermen to gather and organize their armies, with those men and women then being beholden to the bannermen in question and not the nation, Sonuero's crown trained a civilian army with techniques that gave each and every one the skills needed to survive and be an effective force on the battlefield. They could take formations, use firearms accurately, and most important, act as an effective combat match for the armored knights of the era. A tactic that they used to great effect at Montiarigioni.
The battle itself was fought on a hilly area on the outside of the town that gave the battle it's name. The town of Montiarigioni already had it's peasantry stolen and was being torn down, as the Homuerto do to every city they capture, when the Sonueri columns came into view. Homuerto in knights armor, though completely bare of livery of color in general, almost immediately broke away from the rest of their army, thundering towards the seemingly unprepared Sonueri. They weren't in a proper battle line at all, instead bunching up into squares, so separate from each other that the cavalry could have ridden right in-between them all.
Each square formation suddenly became a flower of pike-points (halberds and their ilk would not come into popularity for another century or so) that a few of the knights found themselves speared upon. Each square harbored a surprise in it's center. Trained marksmen, pulled from the ranks of Sonueri Metalspinners and armed with now outdated matchlock arquebus, opened fire as their quarry got in close. Bullets punched through plate armor, backed by the abilities of the metalspinners, causing casualties to skyrocket. The Homuerto couldn't even disengage, all of them being killed to a man by gunfire or quickly finished off with spears and knives.
The rest of the Homuerto army, fighting in the status quo for the time, went pretty much the same way, though the Sonueri suffered great casualties. Kinks to work out in their formations, as well as little being able to be done about powerful Eidos tearing into lines and formations.
Sonuero won, however, much to the benefit of the right-minded world and while the army they crushed was not the only Homuerto force that was present on the continent during the First Misery, they provided an excellent and needed example of modern military ideals and that the Homuerto could be beaten with the right approach and steel in your spine.
Modern scholars have, on occasion, question how much of a victory the Sonueri really achieved at the time. Their casualties are unknown, but contemporary sources list them as high.
So many men and women lost, and the town of Montiarigioni was not saved, nor any of its people. The spot the town was built upon still remains mostly bare. A few souls have returned in the centuries since, but only a handful. Most find the location to have a cursed air, or to be simply meloncolic.
At the time of the battle, the First Misery had been in full swing for over a year, and the white-eyed invaders showed no signs of being satiated. They had sent no envoys, or demands of cities they'd besieged. Only attacking on sight. Many nations had their armies and by extension their nobility had been decimated before being able to take the field, and they could no longer put up a fight.
Luckily, not all nations were in such dire straights. Some simply wished to wait it out, or lacked the military resources to do anything about it. Some, however, were simply biding their time. Countries like Sonuero had sat back from the action, and allowed it's neighbors to suffer the brunt of it. They had done so with a purpose, however. Using that time to revolutionize military practice.
In the years before the First Misery, even as firearms came into service, and cannons appeared more commonly on the battlefield, armies relied upon their nobility and ruling class to provide military manpower and equipment. Knights and the like. As time has marched forward, we have learned that is not the way to cultivate military prowess or at least not the most efficient way, with Sonuero being the first to try something different.
Instead of relying on bannermen to gather and organize their armies, with those men and women then being beholden to the bannermen in question and not the nation, Sonuero's crown trained a civilian army with techniques that gave each and every one the skills needed to survive and be an effective force on the battlefield. They could take formations, use firearms accurately, and most important, act as an effective combat match for the armored knights of the era. A tactic that they used to great effect at Montiarigioni.
The battle itself was fought on a hilly area on the outside of the town that gave the battle it's name. The town of Montiarigioni already had it's peasantry stolen and was being torn down, as the Homuerto do to every city they capture, when the Sonueri columns came into view. Homuerto in knights armor, though completely bare of livery of color in general, almost immediately broke away from the rest of their army, thundering towards the seemingly unprepared Sonueri. They weren't in a proper battle line at all, instead bunching up into squares, so separate from each other that the cavalry could have ridden right in-between them all.
Each square formation suddenly became a flower of pike-points (halberds and their ilk would not come into popularity for another century or so) that a few of the knights found themselves speared upon. Each square harbored a surprise in it's center. Trained marksmen, pulled from the ranks of Sonueri Metalspinners and armed with now outdated matchlock arquebus, opened fire as their quarry got in close. Bullets punched through plate armor, backed by the abilities of the metalspinners, causing casualties to skyrocket. The Homuerto couldn't even disengage, all of them being killed to a man by gunfire or quickly finished off with spears and knives.
The rest of the Homuerto army, fighting in the status quo for the time, went pretty much the same way, though the Sonueri suffered great casualties. Kinks to work out in their formations, as well as little being able to be done about powerful Eidos tearing into lines and formations.
Sonuero won, however, much to the benefit of the right-minded world and while the army they crushed was not the only Homuerto force that was present on the continent during the First Misery, they provided an excellent and needed example of modern military ideals and that the Homuerto could be beaten with the right approach and steel in your spine.
Modern scholars have, on occasion, question how much of a victory the Sonueri really achieved at the time. Their casualties are unknown, but contemporary sources list them as high.
So many men and women lost, and the town of Montiarigioni was not saved, nor any of its people. The spot the town was built upon still remains mostly bare. A few souls have returned in the centuries since, but only a handful. Most find the location to have a cursed air, or to be simply meloncolic.
Conflict Type
Battle
Start Date
28/08/962
Ending Date
28/08/962
Belligerents
Sonuero
Homuerto
Strength
50,000 Footmen
700 arquebusiers
5,000 proto-modern cavalry
20 cannon
80,000 Footmen
10,000 knight-armored cavalry
5,000 archers
Casualties
15,000 dead or wounded
1,250 horses
8 cannon
80,000 Footmen
10,000 knight-armored cavalry
5,000 archers
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