Wearing Bacons Pants at the Dog Show - Life as a Crusader in the Holy Lands
All I have to say is ... Holy Crap!!!
Playing as the Crusaders in AD 1202 ... I'd expanded slowly due to the fact that I had to change campaign styles completely to play as the Kingdom of Jerusalem (i.e. lack of bowmen, armies tiring quickly in the desert heat, great distances between regions, and the need to build churches and pump out merchants and priests as fast as possible).
AD 1201 (summer) - KoJ holds Jerusalem, Al-Kerak, Tyrus, Damascus, Antioch, and Aleppo. Spurred by the constant urging by Prince Guy de Lausignan and an ebbing tolerance for repeated border incursions by the Desert Tribes, King Baudouin of the Kingdom of Jerusalem authorizes Prince Guy to take "whatever action is deemed sufficient and appropriate" to put an end to the encroachment by the Desert Tribes into the Holy Land.
Prince Guy, finally freed from the short leash he'd been on since capturing Aleppo, immediately enlists the help of General Reynaud d'Arles in raising an army that will make the very land quake beneath the feet of the Saracens. Reynaud, the successor to Reynald de Chatillion's rule as the governor of Al-Kerak and no less bloodthirsty, readily agrees and the bells of the Chapel of the Virgin Mary ring without pause for six months until the army is ready.
With the vast resources and army already in Jerusalem at his disposal, Reynaud is quick to raise just the army the Prince had wanted.
On September 18 in the Year of Our Lord 1201, an army of 200 horse, 100 foot and 400 bow with General Reynaud d'Arles riding at the head emerges from the gates of Al-Kerak. Their target - the Desert Tribes' stronghold at Al-Aqabah (Ayla), nearly a year's march away across the hot desert sands.
Several hundred miles to the northeast at Aleppo, Prince Guy's plans to raise a comparable force and launch an attack on Hom have been plagued by internal politics and a shortage of supplies. At the outset of the planning of this crippling dual attack, Hom had been identified by advance scouts as a new and quickly growing threat to the Kingdom's hold on the eastern edge of the Holy Lands.
The governors of the nearest cities, Damasus (Guy's son Olivier) and Antioch (Pierre d'Arcy), readily agreed to deal with the threat in force and pledge their military support. D'Arcy, a rising power in the realm, agrees to provide support in the form of 200 merchant milita cavalry, 250 spears, 200 Templar knights, and ballistae. Damascus immediately mobilizes and dispatches its tower guard of 270 crossbowmen, 200 spears and 50 light cavalry.
The force from Damascus arrives mid-summer, but by mid-September still no sign of the Antioch army. Almost at wits' end, Guy receives a messenger from the western city who nervously informs the Prince that D'Arcy's pledged army had been re-garrisoned at a fort on Armenian border. The army was to act as a precaution at the quest of their esteemed ally, the King of Armenia, to dissuade the Turks from invading.
Cursing loudly and physically tossing the messenger from his council chambers and onto the road headed west back to Antioch, Guy orders all available troops to be ready to march the next day.
The Prince leaves Aleppo the next morning as planned ... with less than half the force intended. His army moves eastward day and night and arrives at the gates of Hom a month in advance of plan, finds the town sealed and immediately lays siege.
Far to the south, Reynaud attacks and lays waste to Ayla - putting the populace to the sword and declaring himself lord of the region in King Baudouin's name. The Desert Tribes threat to the south is extinguished.
Guy, with a sense of almost insane urgency, attacks Hom only to find that the scouting was flawed and the settlement occupied by Egyptians not the Desert Tribes. Already committed, his forces have no choice but to attack despite poor odds against an army twice the Crusaders' number.
The Prince shines that day and the town is taken with scarcely a quarter of his army falling in the battle. The Prince retires to his new governor's quarters and waits.
AD 1202 ... the year of Holy Crap ...
No time for pretty prose for the next turn but ... I guess I pissed off someone.
A jihad is called upon Jerusalem.
By the end of the year, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Hom, Ayla, and Antioch are under siege by the Turks, Egyptians and Desert Tribes with the Moors on the way and a large rebel army growing outside Damascus.
Should be fun...stay tuned kids.
PS-forgive the skipping ahead to 1201, but this was not initially planned as an AAR so I don't have any screenshots yet and I'll save you the trouble of agonizing through the early stages of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1180-1200.
Chuss
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I actually kicked butt and broke all of the sieges ... the turks and egyptians are flooding me with huge amounts of fairly crappy units so the best fight actually involved the Desert Tribes. Go figure.
