Swiss Arms

Chapter 164

Swiss ArmsChapter 164

-VB-

Count John von Toggenburg

1310

He wasn't ready for this, but he was the only one available.

The dawn sun peaked just above the horizon and shined its life-giving light onto the valleys and fields, though for now, the soon-to-be battlefield was shadowed by the hill to its east (to his army's right).

John looked over the Ricken Pass, and couldn't help but feel that he was woefully unprepared for this.

But he was the most prepared out of everyone who weren't.

He pulled his horse around and looked at the twenty-four hundred soldiers - levies, mercenaries, men-at-arms, and knights.

And the man currently advising him was Hans' own father, a mercenary named Louis of Erstfeld. He led a group of forty mercenaries from Erstfeld and an additional forty from other areas of Uri along with nearly a hundred dependents.

He was someone who's seen more battlefields than John had.

"What do you think, Louis?" he asked.

Louis looked out at the pass from a slightly higher point (a boulder).

"This place sucks… for them and you."

John winced. "How so?"

"Look. This pass is only a thousand feet wide but it's divided into three narrower funnels. We have a steep hill to our right and left. Right in the middle of the pass is a two-hundred feet wide and roughly five to ten feet deeper creek that's completely covered up by tall trees that cut our vision. This just leaves roughly one-third of the pass on each side of the creek for us to fight. This means we're not gonna have any cavalry charges unless they are dumb as fuck. At the same time, the hills surrounding the pass are forested, which means it will be difficult for them to try to flank us in any meaningful manner. Worse, it's still February. It may look green on the surface, but everything below the greenery is wet mud. We won't be able to do anything quick, lest you get men stuck in the mud."

John blinked. He hadn't considered that. The mud.

"So we won't have any of theirs - or our - cavalry helping us. This means that this is gonna be a very bloody fight. And we have less people than them."

"... And do we have anything we can use?"

"Of course! Most of us aren't levies, and half of us haven't spent the last few weeks marching." And then he smiled. "But we have better bows and arrows than they do."

They did. He also knew that their steel was better in general, which meant their swords, shields, and armors (for those who had steel armors) would not break as easily.

He turned to one of the rangers, not that he could tell them apart thanks to their face mask and green cloaks.

"This battle will be rough and I'll need you to hold the creek in the middle."

The ranger looked up at him and then looked back down wordlessly. He seemed to be contemplating something before he nodded. "Understood." Then he pulled his hand up and gestured.

From somewhere in the entire army, rangers appeared out of nowhere and stood behind this still nameless ranger captain, who simply wanted to be called "captain." Once they were all gathered, the "captain" looked up at him.

"We will fight when the battle starts. The creek is narrow. Merely tells us to advance or retreat."

"Understood," John replied and then looked back out at the pass.

And the battle did start soon.

---

Louis of Erstfeld

It was obvious to him that all of the problems that his son's fief encountered was because of jealous nobles.

Not nobles like Count John of Toggenburg. No, his son's former ward - who was also the son of one of his enemies - was a good man. He came to the defense of the Compact when he realized there was another threat.

No, men like John weren't common. It was why they were called "good men."

And nobles like the ones they will be fighting were the nobles everyone else disliked.

Greedy. Violent.

And all too eager to put a boot to someone's head if it meant they got a bit of gold in their hands and then flaunt their nobility as a shield.

… Maybe he could follow in his son's footsteps and become a noble killer himself today.

That might start a family tradition or something!

He chuckled and then looked around.

He and his mercenaries had been positioned on the left along with Toggenburg's soldiers. And he saw that they were well armed and armored thanks to his son's ever smoking forges. They also looked healthy and hale.

Good.

All they needed to do was hold the enemy right here. No heroics. No shenanigans.

Some five hundred paces away were their enemies. The vassals of House Habsburg.

Habsburg… they were also the enemies of the Forest Cantons. It was why they joined hands together. Otherwise, the Habsburg would have swallowed them up, too.

"They're coming," someone muttered.

Louis saw and realized that, too.

And that's when the Fluelaberg archers made their move.

From behind the rest of them, those archers with their sophisticated bows nocked their arrows and let them loose.

They flew, whistling high and loud as they sailed across the air, coating the sky by the dozens. Or was it close to a hundred? It looked almost like a hundred arrows, actually.

And slammed into the Habsburg line.

The arrival of the arrows stopped their forward march, and they hastily brought out their pavise shields.

Louis narrowed his eyes to try to get a better look.

Ah… there were far too few pavise shields to cover them all. In fact, most of the soldiers at the front were painstakingly obvious in not having a shield. Most of them were levies!

He looked at his side and saw plenty of shields, especially among the Fluelaberg and Toggenburg contingents. Good. His son and Count John didn't skimp out on defense.

'I mean, I already knew that Hans doesn't,' he thought as he moved behind his own shield. He nodded to his fellows and they quickly linked up their shields together to form a wall.

Not too long after, Habsburg archers loosed their own arrows.

Unlucky for them, they were still too far away and their arrows thudded into the ground some fifty paces in front of Louis.

He smirked.

Good, good. Let them waste their arrows.

He saw the hesitation in the enemy army, but finally, they marched forward again, violently pushed onward by their greedy noble masters.

And that's when the rangers struck. Unseen by everyone, the rangers loosed their own arrows at a much closer range. Those arrows flew and struck their carefully selected targets, and Louis saw knights and nobles atop their steeds fall, either because their horses got struck or because they were struck.

Panic and confusion erupted on their side, and Louis's side loosed their arrows again into that mayhem.

"Forward!" Count John ordered loudly with the wooden "megaphone." Apparently, it was something Hans made, but the name was weird.

Louis marched forward, steps locked in with his fellows from home. Their boots stepped down on the fresh spring greens and then the mud below the greens. Some nearly slipped but they all marched forward. Slowly.

That was the name of the game!

Slowly.

Let the enemy panic. Let them run forward in a hurry.

Finally, a few dozen Habsburg men, men-at-arms and levies, rushed into the creek below. They didn't last long down there as the rangers made quick work of them.

And then Louis heard something he didn't hope to hear.

Fighting.

Not here but on the other side of the creek. Because of the creek's tall trees, he could barely see what was going on over there.

His eyes widened when he saw that on the other side of the pass, the Habsburgs had rushed forward and somehow managed to reach the front.

And the frontline of that side of the pass was made up of soldiers from the rest of the Compact.

It didn't take long for that side of the battlefield to break.

John saw it, too.

"Slow fall back! Rangers, retreat!"

Louis heard more than he saw as the rangers fell back because when the rangers moved, it looked like the trees themselves were moving.

His heart hammered inside his chest.

It had looked like things were going well on this side, but apparently, it was just them having good luck!

"Count -!"

"I know! If they completely push through that side of the pass, then they'll come around to flank us!" If that happened, then they would die. "I'm taking six hundred men with me! You must hold here with the other mercenaries, two hundred of my soldiers, and the men from Fluelaberg!"

Louis grimaced.

"I'll do what I can. Hurry!"

John took off on his horse. "Men of the White Company and Red Company and Blue Company! With me! We go to reinforce the other side!"

That just left the "Black Company" of Toggenburg on this side, the mercenaries, and the Fluelaberg archers. That was … four hundred men.

He looked across the field. The enemies saw what was happening or must have heard something from the other side of the pass, because they began to march forward again. This time, they put some more speed into their forward march.

"Archers!" he shouted. "Loose!"

Their archers shot… but too did the Habsburg archers.

And this time, their arrows made it to his line and stabbed into the ground and the shields.

---

Count Nathanel of Habsburg-Laufenburg

"Push!" he shouted over the clamor of men as the fighting broke into a dirty melee.

But even so, his side - spearheaded by his knights and men-at-arms who were very used to fighting in muddied conditions - fought more cohesively. As they should! He spent a lot of time and money training them!

And the decades of training was paying off on the battlefield now.

"PUSH!"

One of his knights stepped forward and cut down a peasant soldier, breaking the peasant's weird spear shaft and then cutting deep into the gambeson he wore. As that peasant died screaming, another one came up to try to stop the knight, but the knight smoothly followed up from his previous attack into a stab for this peasant.

Nathanael grinned.

"Marauders!" he shouted to his still mounted soldiers. "To the left! We ride along the hillside!"

The hill was steep, yes, but with the Compact's soldiers now fully occupied in the melee, no one would stop them! Instead of flanking their side, he intended to go all the way around and flank their rear.

"EYAH!" he shouted and his horse took off. And behind him, he heard the thundering rumble of his fifty cavalrymen following after him.

---

Count John of Toggenburg

When he arrived to the right side of the pass, it was already too late. Somehow, the enemy cavalry had punched through the wooded hillside and attacked the rear.

"Crossbowmen, aim for those horses!" he shouted.

Crossbowmen pushed their way to the front just as the enemies realized that John had brought reinforcements. They fired into the mounted soldiers. Most of the bolts struck the horses rather than the mounted soldiers, but it caused a cascade of shrieking horses to go down.

But, again, it was already too late. The mounted soldiers may have gone down but John saw his and the Compact's soldiers routing.

"Hold!" he shouted as he got off of his horse and sent it back.

The crossbowmen retreated along with the fleeing soldiers.

And then he saw what he was about to hold himself again.

Thousands of soldiers. All charging toward his position with their swords, spears, and halberds.

He had just six hundred. Maybe seven hundred if they managed to bring a hundred men to stop fleeing to pick up a spear.

He grimaced.

"Fighting retreat! And someone get to the other side and tell them to also start their fighting retreat!"

-VB-

The Battle of Ricken Pass (1310) began favorably for the Compact.

With the pass divided into two sides (the falter but narrower western route and the more rugged yet wider eastern route), the Habsburg vassals could not fully utilize their larger numbers and had to divide up their forces. The overall commander of the defenders, Count John of Toggenburg, divided up his forces into two forces with the one thousand and one hundred men holding the narrower west and the one thousand three hundred holding the wider east.

Due to the spring rain muddying the field, the wider and rugged eastern route ended up slowing down the larger and infantry-focused Habsburgs. On this route, the Compact rained down hell with their superior bows and defended with better armor and shields.

However, the same could not be said for the western route. The route on that side of the pass ended up being drier, so when the Habsburgs charged at them, they were barely slowed down by the mud and the arrows. This side also had the Compact's less disciplined "rabble" components of the army, which were the few hundreds of troops each member of the Compact contributed. With looser discipline and weaker coordination, they fell against the surprising rush of Habsburg manpower.

Count John saw this from the other side of the pass and pulled back half of his troops from the east to support the west, but by the time he got there, it was already too late. The army holding the west had routed, leaving Count John to try to hold the route with just seven hundred men against a tide of two thousand.

The same situation also played out back in the eastern route. Its wider route allowed the Habsburgs to slowly push forward, though at a great body count.

Both sides of the pass were slowly getting pushed forward by the Habsburgs, and it looked like the battle would be lost. Over the course of this four hour battle, the Habsburgs lost two thousand men, more or less a quarter of their total fighting force. The Compact lost eight hundred, close to two-thirds of their fighting force.

Towards the end of the battle, both Mercenary Commander Louis and Count John had pulled back completely out of the pass and into the Toggenburg Valley with a combined total of a meager six hundred soldiers while the Habsburgs were bearing down on them with two thousand men.

Overwhelmed by more than twice the enemy's numbers and exhausted from two hours of intense combat, Count John was ready to call a full retreat.

But that's when Count Hans von Fluelaberg arrived from the Compact's rear with his one thousand and four hundred soldiers.