We were to hold the right flank. We never stood a chance.
I once believed in the cause. We rebelled against the King Fredrick William the Second's tyranny. In my youthful enthusiasm, I joined the rebel army against the pleadings of my family. I thought it would be noble to fight for this country's poor, for the enslaved masses living under the yoke of a monarch gone mad. But after two years of war...no, not war. To say that we've been at war would be to imply a picture that would be a mere romantic illusion...an illusion that, like so many others in youth, will too often soar with ignorance before a harsh sun melts away the wax. 'War' would belie the facade of two grande, disciplined armies, thrust and counter thrust, generals studiously pointing at maps with wondrously engraved sabres far into the night in large tents lit with half-melted candles. No, this has been no war. This has been a hunt. We have been fox to the King's army of hounds, an army who's strength and hunger to maintain the tyrant's power (and the the scraps from his table), we have so tragically underestimated.
We learned early in the rebellion that meeting the King's army in open-field pitched-battle was folly. Courage and wonderous speeches to inspire men make for great reading for knitting wives and little boys sitting around the hearth on stormy nights. In the field, discipline gives you courage - the discipline to know what will happen under almost any circumstance, to know that your comrade will remain standing next to you under the enemy's volley and not drop his musket and flee. The discipline that comes from knowing the officers have a plan, and that you need only point and fire. At the tip of a line being charged by thundering cavalry, courage does not come from thoughts of home and lovers and heady principles written by pasty intellectuals on outlawed printers. By God it does not. The blood of our country's future was spilled learning that we do not have the discipline to face the King in direct combat. So we have taken to the hills, and the woods. We ally ourselves with the worst of men - thieves and mountain bandits - anyone who fights our enemy, regardless of the blackness of his heart. We starve, and we leave our wounded behind. We move by night, we burn villages loyal to the king, and we run like the wind. And after two years of this, after aging a thousand lifetimes, I have come to realize that this 'war' was lost the day we took up arms.
But surrender has never been an option. We have been collectively found guilty of high treason, and none who fall into the hands of the King's army survive. We are no longer fighting for a cause...we fight for our lives.
These lives are all but forfeit now. Three days ago, the King made peace with his bitter enemies in Bavaria, enemies who, until now, have been providing us with arms and supply. We have no doubts large sums of monies changed hands, and some deal was brokered that further plunged our nation into one of servitude and debt. No matter. With Bavaria's treachery, our rearguard was lost, and we were quickly surrounded. With nowhere to run, out of allies, starving, desperate, and damned, we made our stand. This cold December morning, the air crisp and the ground hard, the sun rising over our shoulders, giving a modicum of warmth and clarity on our backs and necks, my regiment was to hold the right flank.
We never stood a chance.