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Another factual ficty thingy... I'm getting reptitive, aren't I?

Edit

Narratorway is totally right about the whole 'sudden surrender' thing: I forgot to finish it! Parts that were edited now have an edit box around them

Famous Military Events of The World
One: The Battle of Terra, 939.
Combatants: Vector and Albrook
Forces: Vectorian 2nd Army (4 Divisions) versus elements of Albrooks 4th, 3rd and 1st Armies (2/3/1 division/s)
Force numbers: Vector: 20,000 men
Albrook: 30,000 men.
Commanding Officers: Vector: General Charles Pallazzo. Albrook: Hamlet Hungerford-Laird.
Casualties: Vector:5,670 KIA, 4,000 wounded. Albrook: 15,567 KIA, 9,933 wounded/captured.
Result:Decisive Vectorian Victory.

The Battle of Terra was the turning point which led to the formation of the Vectorian Federation, and ultimately, the Vectorian Empire. For the past five years, Albrook had been steadily driving towards Vector, and any Vectorian counter-attack was itself driven back. The two armies lines ‘see-sawed’ back and forth, but Albrook was never forced back over it’s own border.

The two forces met in the Vectorian region of Terra, at around 8AM. Vector’s forces were outnumbered, and Albrook was confident of victory. The battlefield was around the small village of Folio, with the main objectives to hold the village and the three bridges over the river. Albrook had tasked entire divisions to each bridge, and two to the village. Vector’s Infantry held all three, the cavalry In reserve at the Foli Forest 800 yards behind the village. Vector’s artillery was dotted behind and along their lines, four regiments of cannon and mortar.

At around 8, the first infantry forces of Albrook charged Vector’s lines at the village, an attempted feint to draw them out of cover to be charged by cavalry. However, General Pallazzo had ordered his men to engage at range, and the result was that Vector’s troops began to pick off enemy riflemen, and as the fire support of Albrook faltered, the charging units were then hit hard by the counter-charging Vectorians. Albrook’s Cavalry and Artillery moved up, but again, Vector’s guns picked off the support, and the cavalry-counter-charge came. The first attack at the village had been repelled.

Disastrously for Albrook, their efforts to engage the village and encircle it by taking the bridges had failed. The village forces were not engaged, and the cavalry had all moved to charge at the bridges. Albrook’s three divisions at the bridges were decimated by the vectorian charge, under the fire support of Vector’s rifles and artillery, which had remained In cover as Albrook had attempted to use superior numbers to replace cover. Only one bridge had been taken: and it was Retaken by vectorian cavalry rallying the retreating infantry and charging a force twice their size.

Albrook’s entire strategy had fallen apart. General Pallazzo himself led the 4th and 7th Cavalry regiments in a charge towards Albrook’s rear lines. With half the Vectorian forces remaining In reserve, Palazzo’s brave move charged across the three miles where Albrook’s stunned infantry and reserve cavalry were cut down by fast moving Vectorian cavalry under the sniping cover of their rifle regiments. Vector’s charge captured nearly all of Albrook’s surviving soldiers, only 4500 soldiers of artillery regiments and infantry forces who had retreated In the face of the awesome Vectorian charge making it away from the field.

Albrook’s commanders were panicked by the defeat. So much of it’s army on the offensive had been killed or captured, that the entire attack would need to fall back to Albrook. In the chaotic attempts to do so, arms, equipment, and even men, were elft behind and at the mercy of the advancing Vectorians. The defeat had struck such a severe shock to the government, who had been so confident of victory, that the sudden changes in the way commanders acted fell hard upon the morale of non-comissioned officers and the rank and file of Albrook's army.

The confusion, aided by an uprising populace which began to ambush messengers, saw another 5000 men left behind during the retreat and captured, in addition to the fact that it led straight to the Slaughter at Keval Pass, three miles east of the city of Keval. The loss of many messengers had led to some divisions not withdrawing for quite some time, and, a full week after every other force had withdrawn, the 4th division of the 2nd army finally received orders to retreat by a messenger. Rumour and conspiracy ahs it the messenger was actually a Vectorian officer, the official documents say he was sent out two days before when the absence of the division was noted, Albrookian urban legend says he had been heavily wounded and crawled to the division's camp, but either way, the orders given sent the division down a valley packed with Vectorian troops, and sent them mostly to their deaths.

It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and never before had propaganda served to cause such self harm. The Albrook officers clumsily attempted to cover it all up, but rumour had begun before fact had denied, and the mere fact the rumour was being denied simply reinforced the strength of the gossip. The claims snowballed out ofr proportion, first, two divisions had been decimated, then wiped out totally, and then, an entire army. Morale plummeted, desertion rates rocketed, as did the number of court martial and suicides . Two sudden slaughters, that Albrook’s forces had been told were impossible, coupled with a panic spreading like a bushfire, saw the entire Albrook front begin to crumble. Rumours that Vector was approaching the city of Royal, in Lear, saw the defending troopers fallback from the borders totally in the entire region.

Three days following this, the ruler of Vector, Emperor Christopher Forden, ordered Pallazzo to charge and invade Albrook: via the open path that was barely just being refilled by the retreating Albrook troops doing a U-Turn upon discovering their error. The invasion never came: Albrook’s government had surrendered to the Vectorian Ambassador that same day, the panic having spread into Parliament and seeing angry MP’s shouting in fury and terror at the president to surrender, and pleaded for an end to hostilities. Vector instead offered the treaty of Folio, the famous document that was written to confirm an economic alliance between Tzen, Albrook, and Vector, to repair the damage done and ensure peaceful trade. This was expanded to be a military alliance some years later in 952, and, in 984, the three nations plus Miranda, occupied by Vector and Tzen since 950, merged to officially ensure that no other nation would dare to consider combating the huge military and economic alliance, now officially an entire country rather than a possibly-breakable alliance.

This post has been edited by Del S on 9th June 2005 13:21

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

That is a neat idea and really well thought out. However, the surrender irks me for being so sudden. To hear news of a battle and surrender because of it in the space of one day strikes me as rather unrealistic. Especially considering how well it had been going for them before hand.

Edit

That's a neat addition and it's far more compelling. I kinda viewed it as "The Longest Day" as seen by the Germans.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 2nd June 2005 22:43

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Not so much NP. Generals can get over confident and destroy themselves. It isn't completely unheard of for one battle to completely turn a war into a counter rout, provided the bulk of the enemies military power is destroyed. What was it about putting all your eggs in one basket? When it drops, you lose them all

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Well, Narratorway was right, in that it was a totally sudden surrender compared to what I actually meant, having missed a decent portion of it out. There's a little term called victory disease, which essentially means that after a good spell, when you fall, it hurts more. Albrook was very confident here: and then, the shock of the first hit leaves them totally unprepared for the next hit... namely Keval Pass.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Excellence. A great example of what happens when you get Victory Disease, like Del says, and you pit a general with a Rommelesque plan (namely Pallazzo) against one with an Ambrose Burnside-like plan (Hungerford-Laird). Another great read into battle strategy. I knew Albrook was doomed from the start, with that battle plan.

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Two: Slaughter at Keval Pass, 939.
Combatants: Vector and Albrook
Forces: Albrookian 4th division, 2nd Army versus approx 2 divisions equivalent of Vectorian troops.
Force numbers: Vector: Approx 10,000 men.
Albrook: 5,000 men
Commanding Officers: Vector: Major General Guais Locmort. Albrook: Brigadier General Vonzor Covalstein.
Casualties: Vector: 245 men KIA est. Albrook:4,900+ Men KIA, remainder captured/wounded
Result: Decisive Vectorian Victory.

This “Battle”, shortly after the glorious victory at the Battle of Terra, is not as well known, nor as well remembered, as it’s more illustrious prelude. Perhaps it is the fact it was nothing more than a slaughter of an outnumbered foe rather than a victory against a larger enemy that is the cause of this, or the fact there is rumour about the reasons the Albrook forces went straight into the trap. Either way, there are few facts about events before the battle.

After Albrook’s defeat over a week earlier at The Battle of Terra, Albrook’s forces had been thrown into disarray. Units were being ordered to withdrawn from Vector, moral was in tatters, and worse, communication was breaking down. The breakdown in communications meant that the 4th division of the 2nd army, consisting of 3 regiments infantry, 2 regiments cavalry, and a regiment of artillery, was left behind at Keval City, three miles east of the pass entrance itself. Somehow, no messengers had ever reached the division, until one day nearly a week after every other force had withdrawn, a messenger arrived, and ordered the division thought the pass. The factual evidence that can be confirmed is that the messenger arrived, but rumour says the messenger was a Vectorian agent, luring the division into the trap, or that the messenger was heavily wounded after being attacked by Vectorian partisans. The division, for whatever reason, went down the pass at dawn the next day.

The pass itself is a kilometre wide at it‘s widest points, between the craggy faces of Mount Keval and Mount Uthur at its opening, and dozens of other mountains along its 25 kilometre length reaching to a point 10 kilometeres from the nearest Albrookian soil. Part of the Broki mountain range across the Albrookian and Vectorian borders (1), the pass remains entirely in Vector as does most of the mountain range.

The first Albrook units to move into the pass, the 21st and 11th infantry and the 19th cavalry, encountered no problems. Going along the central road of the pass, they reached in for two kilometres before any indication of an ambush was encountered. This was in the form of the Vectorian artillery, arrayed in the trees, and, as soon as the Albrookians were in range, firing upon them. Second after this, Vectorian rifle units, hidden in the forests and cliffs to the sides, began firing upon the startled soldiers. The Albrook forces retreated, outnumbered and outgunned by the ambush, but suffered heavy casualties doing so.

At the same time, the Artillery and their reargaurd, a regiment of infantry and a regiment of cavalry, were also ambushed by Vectorian infantry and some smaller cannon. The artillery moved to set up, but, under fire, and with little cover, this task was virtually impossible. To make matters worse, half of Vector’s cavalry had been concealed at the pass entrance, and watched the Albrook army move into the trap. When the first rumbles of explosions had came echoing over the mountains, they raced into the pass, surrounding and cutting off the Albrook division. The remaining cavalry had been behind the original ambush, and waited for the Albrook forces to be fully driven off, in order to have both cavalry charges strike at once. The infantry forces advanced after the fleeing Albrook forces, driving the Albrook forces all together.

The two Vectorian cavalry charges arrived at virtually the same minute, to move in towards a force surrounded, outgunned, and rapidly losing men. The Albrook resistance to the first charge to arrive was as fierce as it could be, but under heavy enemy fire, out in the open, and now, being charged from two sides and with no other ways out, blocked either by mountain, cliff, or enemy infantry, the division was slaughtered. Less than 100 of the soldiers were captured, most of them wounded, and nearly half dying of their injuries within a month.

Vector had killed over 4,900 enemy soldiers, using 10,000 of it’s own that had managed to not only slip past the division at Keval city, but remain unnoticed by the Albrook forces. It had lost less than 300 of it’s own soldiers in the process.

The reasons for how the battle managed to occur are as widely speculated as the messenger. Some speculate that the Vectorian forces, after confirming that there was a division at the city, decided to go around, and ambush it when it did retreat. After managing to get a messenger, either an actual Albrook one, or a fake one, to the division, they speculated as to the route the enemy would take, or even gave the enemy the route, into the waiting guns of the Vectorian army. It is still a mystery as to how the entire enemy army surrounding the Albrook forces was missed, but weather records for the time of the battle confirm that, due to heavy rainfall, visibility was low. The pass is also infamous for occasionally having sporadic and thick fog even on clear , sunny, summer days due to geysers across the range, most notably at Mount Uthur, and so, coupled with the Vectorian’s practise of camouflaging, the Albrook forces did not see the enemy until the enemy revealed themselves.

The aftermath of the slaughter was that rumour began to fly amongst the Albrook forces now defending the border. The clumsy attempts to conceal the disastrous carnage merely fuelled the rumours further, snowballing the event out of proportion, doubling the fatalities, or even quadrupling casualties. The two sudden slaughters, that Albrook’s forces had been told were impossible, had the same effect on the Albrook morale as a rifle shot has upon glass. The shattered Albrook army began to fall back, and, in the face of such devastating and probably irrecoverable morale damage, Albrook’s government was forced to surrender to Vector by rising panic amongst the populace and the fact that even experienced generals were reported to be deserting. The end result was the formation of the Vectorian federation, and ultimately, the Vectorian Empire.

1- Note that this goes by the assumption that the world map is a representation altered for gameplay mechanics. The mountains east of vector are this mountain range, which covers the border regions.

This post has been edited by Del S on 9th June 2005 13:18

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Three: Battle of Bauer Island, 980
Combatants: Doma (Defender) and Mobliz (Attacker)
Forces: First Stage Mobliz assault: 1 Marine Division. First stage Doman Defence: 2 Regiments Militia, 2 Battleship groups (Sank/captured).
Second Stage: 2 Mobliz Army divisions, 1 ad-hoc regiment Militia plus 2 reinforcing divisions.
Force numbers:First Stage Mobliz: 1000 Marines used to take southern town of Frica, plus 4000 Marines used in assault on Lectiv.
First Stage Doma: 1500 Militiamen, 700 Doman Sailors.
Commanding Officers: Doma: Colonel Redderman Fogg (KIA first stage) then Acting-Colonel, (actually Major) Cyan Garamonde.
Mobliz: Commander Seamus Rough, Mobliz Republican Marine Corp, then Major-General William Uagarn.
Casualties: First Stage: Doma: 696 KIA, 500 Captured, 234 wounded (Including crew of naval warships). Mobliz: 3476 (including crews of hijacked battleships) KIA, unknown wounded.
Second Stage: Doma: 1,254 KIA, 1,128 wounded. Mobliz: 4,678 KIA, 2,296 wounded.
Result: First stage: Phyrric Doman Victory.
Second Stage: Doman Victory

This two-stage battle should not have been important in the long run of the war. A small engagement of a division of Moblizian ‘River Cavalry’ Marines versus the sorely-outnumbered Domans in late December, it should have been an easy victory, opening the Bauer Straight to a ferry service to invade Johalia and Preston. It instead collapsed into utter defeat for Mobliz, and caused a massive Doman invasion, rather than the planned Moblizian assault.

At midnight, Mobliz landed 1,000 marines at the southern port of Frica (which was eventually renamed Gordal by the Moblizinas after the war), and captured it quickly, the sleeping militias disarmed and forced to surrender without a single fatality. Meanwhile, the Moblizian marines also snuck onto and neutralised the moored Doman ships at the port. So far, only 23 Moblizians had died in the gun battles to invade the Doman fleet, capturing the two battleships, and forcing the surrender of the other ships after the two captured ships were used to sink four of eight destroyers , a move taken to prevent the immense battleships guns being turned on the rest of the fleet or used to attack Doma, and outside of the town, the attack was still unknown, the nearby towns and villages would not try to find out what the cause of the blast was until morning, and the scouts would be met by Moblizian ambushes.

The previous evening, Mobliz’s navy had launched an all-out offensive upon Preston with it’s entire southern fleet, engaging an outnumbered Doman fleet in the area and dragging Doma’s reinforcements south, Doma thinking the huge naval assault a precursor of a full naval invasion. In reality, the naval invasion was north, and still unknown to Doman defenders not already dispatched.

That changed when the full Mobliz marine force landed, and headed north. Victory had been achieved because Domans did not think anyone would attack at night. The 4000 Moblizian Marines were however spotted by a Doman runner going to the town of Frica to order the battleships south to assist the Preston battle, and the Mobliz ambushes were spotted by and snuck past by the messenger, where he saw the landing craft, and then raced back to the large town of Lectiv (Renamed Almedia and given city status post-war by the Veldtland government). There, the thousand milita defenders were rallied, and a message dispatched to the mainland, using the recently-installed telegraph system, at the time one of only three national grids of telegraph wires alongside Figaro and Vector.

Mobliz waited until nightfall to attack, thinking the defenders would not be manning their artillery or battlements. They were wrong. The first marine battalion to attempt to sneak towards the town walls was blasted by volley fire from a single rifle squad, before being pounded by light artillery. The first wave of three battalions had already seen one of the attacking groups of 500 blown apart, and the remaining thousand charged in, but the evenly-matched numbers saw the light Moblizians torn apart by the heavy guns of the defenders.

Before dawn, Mobliz tried to get its own guns into position, and managed to get a battery operating against some of the Doman positions. The 1500 remaing Moblizian infantry moved in under the firefight, and managed to breach the town walls. But the battle between the artillery teams was going Doma’s way, and Molblizan casualties to eliminate the guns were high. Eventually, the Moblizian forces, having suffered devastating losses, retreated. Of the 4000 Marines sent to the island to capture it, 3290 were dead, and the majority of the remainder wounded. Of the Doman defenders, only 468 soldiers remained able to fight, and most of the Doman artillery had been damaged or destroyed. Worse, Doma’s commanding officer , Colonel Redderman Fogg had been killed in the first artillery barrage from the Moblizians, one of the shells landing on the town hall, killing Colonel Fogg along with 34 others, most of them civilians.

Two days later, the next stage of the battle begun. Doma’s reinforcing first wave was an hour out from the town. However, Mobliz had managed to land two entire army divisions at Frica, still held by the marines, and a few destroyers of the Moblizian navy. The battleships had been sunk by two Doman warships as they tried to head up and bombard Lectiv. This force was 6 regiments of soldiers, 4 of Cavalry, and 2 of Artillery. It would take a day to fully mobilize the Veldetian troops, and about that time to properly deploy, so the two armies waited.

The next night, it begun. In the gloomy sunset, as rain began to fall from the sky, Doma’s guns opened up on the advancing enemy. Commander of the two reinforcing divisions, Major Garamonde, had reasoned that artillery would be most useful in defence, so had left a cavalry regiment behind to be shipped in later, and that regiment was to arrive the next day with a further 2400 Infantrymen and 1000 other cavalry in addition to the 2400 soldiers, 500 cavalry, and 500 gun batteries he already commanded, plus the 480 local defenders. That they would oppose unknown enemy numbers of all three was testament to the bravery and determination of the Domans. Mobliz in fact had 5200 Infantry, 2000 cavalry, and 600 guns on the island, outnumbering the defenders about two to one. Mobliz was still playing numbers however, and Major Garamonde knew the Moblizian plan would be to try and have Doma’s guns expose themselves first. He did not let that happen, instead, having organised volleys of fire poured onto the attacking infantry, Cavalry on standby to charge out of the town gates when the Mobliz artillery exposed itself. It did so with an awesome volley, that soon became more of an awful volley: most of the shells fell short onto the attackers! The jubilant Doman gunners fired soon after, and their aim could get no worse than the mortified Moblizian crews. The damage done by the Doman counter-fire plus the huge morale impact of the friendly fire incident caused some Moblizan crews to rout, and those who did not soon found the huge numbers of Doman guns outnumbering them as the remaining guns were eliminated with saturation fire. Mobliz’s forces fell back once more, an entire division wiped out by the flawed attack.

The last substage was Doma’s liberation of Frica, and this was done with Major Garamonde at it’s head. A fearsome cavalry charge, with support from not only the guns of the Doman attackers but cruisers of the Doman fleet, fell upon the remaining Moblizian defenders, who quickly surrendered.

This failure for Mobliz meant that Doma had halted their actual assault, and, coupled with the Preston battle having seen a Doman victory, saw Doma counter-attack into Mobliz. The defeats at Bauer and at Preston for Mobliz should have only been notable as the first strike in a Moblizian invasion, but clumsy commanders and clumsy gunners saw to it that not only was morale destroyed, but so was the advantage of numbers. Doma’s counter-attack played that same advantage at the battle of Briae a month later in the new year, using the numbers not only of it‘s own forces but of their allies from Thamasa to win that battle and then drive all the way to Mobliz city itself, but, with the aid of Vector, Albrook and Tzen, Mobliz eventually took the island three years later: after it had lost over two hundred thousand lives driving the Domans back from Mobliz, and driving the Thamasan allies of Doma back home.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.