The political history of Ludobravia stretches back to the year 1287, when the dukedoms of Altobravia and Bassobravia united to form the Kingdom of Bravia, dominating what is now the northernmost third of Ludobravia. For much of its history, the Kingdom of Bravia was at war with the three smaller kingdoms to the south: Caria, Tiel-Tiersel and Schweigelstein; as well as fending off sporadic raids and attacks from the neighbouring kingdoms of Schwabenland and Dlacerland to the north.
In 1382, Schwabenland launched a concerted attack on the Bravian nations and subjugated all of them in quick succession. Schwabenland’s hold on Bravia persisted throughout the 15th Century, with numerous rebellions being consistently crushed by the Schwaben occupiers.
By the latter half of the 16th Century, however, the Schwaben grip on the Bravian valleys was weakening, and a new wave of nationalism swept through the region. Tiel-Tiersel rebelled in 1557, and Caria and Schweigelstein offered their allegiance in return for rights as semi-autonomous protectorates in the Tripartite Alliance. The governors of Altobravia and Bassobravia, however, ensured that their territories maintained their subservience to Schwabenlandand in 1558 a combined Schwaben-Bravian army under General Holz marched south to invade Tiel-Tiersel. The Tripartite army was led by General Augustin Fleme, a merchant-turned-soldier who had been hastily awarded command of the Tripartite army. The two armies clashed at the Battle of Hildeglade, where a decisive Schwaben cavalry charge smashed the Carian right wing and forced a rout of the Tripartite army. Subsequent engagements proved the superiority of Schwaben drill training, and the Tripartite army was forced into a campaign of guerrilla warfare in order to stop the armies now rampaging through the Tripartite kingdoms. Notable in this campaign was the death of General Fleme at Boskowe Wood in late 1559 when his troop of Tielian marauders was encircled in the snow-covered pine forests of northeastern Tiel-Tiersel. The General and his men resolved to stand their ground and fight to the last man, and in the bitter hand-to-hand combat that followed, Fleme was cut down along with his personal standard bearer. The Tielians themselves were only saved from utter annihilation by the timely arrival of the Schweigelstein Dragoons, an elite mobile skirmishing force, whose devastating charge collapsed the Schwaben flank and transformed a certain victory into an ignominious defeat. To this day, the 12th Schweigelstein Regiment bears the name “Sword Sabres” after the famous action, and an allusion to it appears in the second verse of the national anthem
Ludobravia!.
Heavy fighting continued all across the lower valleys of the Bravian regions, with both sides gaining victories and suffering losses. In mid-1560, however, the flagging independence movement was revived by the emergence of Baron Ludo Mols, a distant descendant of the old Tielian royal family, who reluctantly agreed to leave his mountainous stronghold and act as a figurehead for the revolutionaries. Accounts from the time show that the baron was initially sceptical of any chance of victory, as the Schwabens were marching in an army of ten thousand men from the north, but this changed when he was given command of the newly-reformed Tripartite army, which had been equipped with the latest weaponry from <another Europan country> and secretly drilled away from the front lines. Seeing the chance for victory in a fresh new army, the Baron mobilised his own household to support the war effort and drew up a new banner for the independence army; a tricolour of green for the valleys, white for the snows and grey for the mountains and skies of the Bravia-Tripartite region. To this standard rallied a fresh wave of recruits as well as over a thousand mercenaries from neighbouring states.
The Tripartite Army met the Schwaben Army in the Valley of the River Opol late on the 12th of December, 1560. The river was frozen over and each army was drawn up on one of its gently rising banks. The Schwaben army consisted of roughly 12,000 troops; four thousand Schwabens comprising the centre and right wing of their army apiece, and four thousand footsoldiers from the occupied Bravian territories. In opposition to them, the Tripartites could only muster eight thousand men total. Baron Ludo placed three thousand Tielians on his left flank, a further three thousand Carians and Schweigels in his centre, and 1200 mercenaries on his right flank to face the Bravians. On the extremes of his army he placed 400 cavalry apiece, ensuring that the elite Schweigelstein Dragoons were positioned to watch over the mercenary right.
The battle began the next day, just before dawn as the cold light of morning began to steal into the valley. Baron Ludo forfeited the high ground of his slope to march down into the valley in the hopes of drawing the opposing army into immediate combat. The Schwabens obliged and marched off their own slopes to face them. When they were within arquebus-shot of the Tripartite army, the Schwabens raised their war-yells and charged across the frozen river. During the night, however, Baron Ludo had ordered sappers to sneak down to the river directly in front of his centre and damage the ice. They had also poured gunpowder into small trenches hidden by snow, and these were now set off by means of a powder-trail fuse.
The initial explosion killed few soldiers, but it ruptured the ice and sent much of the fisrt and second ranks plunging headlong into the icy water. As they did so, the Carian and Schweigel infantry to the centre opened fire with a line of handgunners and arquebusiers, sweeping the third Schwaben rank with a volley of lead. In the chaos and confusion the rear ranks jostled the front ranks into the water, and the rear ranks began to dissolve as the troops sought higher, steadier ground.
Meanwhile, on the Tripartite right flank, a troop of Schweigel cavalry had raced ahead of the main formation and drew up close to the oncoming Bravian regiment. As the Bravians drew within musket-shot the detonation of the river-ice sounded clear across the battlefield, and the Schweigels raised their lances, atop of each fluttered the independence tricolour. The lead cavalryman rode up and shouted “come, my brothers! We are all of Bravia, let us fight in her name!” He was able to ride within earshot of the Bravian commanders without being fired upon, and General Kessel von Mieglen was reputed to have said to General Edwin Tumpf, “well, shall we have a battle then?” It was to Baron Ludo’s utter delight that as the Schwaben centre began to dissolve it was suddenly impacted in the flank and the rear by the Bravian formation, which now flew the banners given to it by the Schweigels.
On the left flank, however, the battle was not going so smoothly. The Tielians did not have gunpowder traps of their own, and were now being met by elite Dlacer halberdiers in a brutal close-combat action. The fight took place atop the frozen river itself, and many a soldier suddenly lost his footing and met his death helpless on the ice. The Tielian commander, General Hals, was hacked down as he defended his wounded horse with a half-pike, and the shock of the halberdiers’ onslaught steadily forced the Tielians back across the river. A massed charge by the Schweigel cavalry was met with an equally ferocious counter-charge by a squadron of mounted Dlacer horsemen and in places the heavily-equipped cavalrymen plunged through the ice as it gave way beneath the weight of the combatants. When the leftermost Tielian infantry began to give way it seemed as though the entire flank would collapse in disorder and rout.
Seeing this, Baron Ludo’s advisors suggested that he should train the four Tripartite cannon on the river and smash the ice, drowning both sides to preserve his flank’s integrity. Shocked, Ludo dismissed them all from his service and instead personally led his household troops across the battlefield and into the left-flank affray. His arrival at the left coincided with the shock Bravian assault on the Schwaben centre, and within half an hour the entire Schwaben army (save for the stalwart Dlacer halberdiers) was in total rout to the north.
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