You are a captain of a force of some twenty one knights, it used to be a force of some 48 knights until you decided to attack that town on the southern coast.
See you got out of some some merchants that said area did not have any knights, so you thought that it would be easy pickings for plundering and conquest. The only problem was that the locals instead of hiding under their beds or running to the forest while you stole their stuff and raped them gathered into a big block of guys that walked towards your spear of knights. Normally a mob of peasants would just scatter but these guys walked towards in neat ranks and instead of breaking they held their lines. They withstood the charge and cut down most of your knights taking few losses of their own, after which they retreated.
Now you got to go back to your host and tell your lord about your defeat. Apparently there are more towns like that one in it's general area.
>>44431337
Alright, now that we got some of our local nobility killed, why didn't we:
A. Flank the side of a static formation
B. Enlist some mercenaries
C. Bring literally any kind of freemen auxillary force.
D. Do some fucking target practice and pepper them with ranged fire.
E. Raid smaller steads further out that their patrols cannot respond to quickly enough to rouse a militia.
>>44431337
This scenario raises some questions.
Levy troops aren't usually disciplined enough to stand in the face of a charge. They'll feel the charge coming, deep in their gut, and soil themselves, running in fear because they haven't been trained from birth to fight. Something is stiffening their spines.
Levy troops don't have the discipline or training to maintain ranks and they sure as hell wouldn't all be similarly armed. Someone, an outside factor, is training and arming them.
The answer is simple: find this outside factor. Kill them. When the head dies, the body follows.
>Unprepared, levy troops assembling and quickly forming a phalanx
>Standing against heavy cavalry wedge
>Disciplined and well drilled
>Essentially a militia
>Professional soldiers didn't flank a pike formation
>Nor did they attack before the "village" could finish mustering their troops and their non-professional officers and sergeants could get them into formation
Well, since reality is on holiday apparently I send a rag tag crew of the Kingdom's shiftiest prisoners to handle the problem.
They had some lookouts obviously.
>>44431337
>Plunder
>Rape
>48 knights to conquer an entire fucking town
Why am I surrounded by morons? I resign from my position and offer my services to the town that wrecked my shit, as it appears to be the only place in the known world filled with rational and decent people.
>>44431337
>heavily armored calvary in steel plate were overcome by a bunch of peasant military with bronze weaponry.
So, pic related?
>>44431866
Thrifty and shifty criminals?
>>44434432
Lol the don't have knights sorry but if you want to become a citizen we think we can let you find a job for yourself; just don't cause trouble
>>44431337
While an unfortunate and costly lesson, twenty dead men is a mere greeting. I will return to the Duke and explain the event. Obviously no single town could assemble a force of soldiers like that, there must be some sort of confederation of villages or cantons that have pooled their resources to assemble an army to repel our raids.
The most logical course of action is to simply ignore them and attack the other villages. An infantry formation is slow by nature, and cavalry are fast. If they really are shared between the townships then we only need fear them in one location at once. We can burn and pillage the rest of the country with impunity, avoiding their host until after we have disposed of all other potential reinforcements.
If every town has a guard like this, then we're in trouble, but I would not assume that to be the case, and even if it is, we can simply dismount and fight them as an infantry block of our own. Our superior armor and warrior ethos will surely outweigh their puny numerical advantage.
>>44436388
Howabout taking a job as "town cavalryman".
>>44431337
ok i will belive you that they were disciplied but how the fuck did you manage to fuck up so badly anyway was it hubris i bet it was hubris.
