[SS 6.4 + SSHIP] A Castle on a Hill: A Serbia AAR
Alrighty, here's another attempt at writing an AAR. I don't think the writing is as inspired as the Norway one (not that the Norway one was the stuff of legend), but hopefully it'll be entertaining nonetheless.
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A CASTLE ON A HILL: A Serbia AAR
Stainless Steel 6.4
Stainless Steel Historical Improvement Project (SSHIP) 0.9.2
Difficulty: Very Hard / Very Hard
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Turns 1-36: Forming Alliances, Getting Things Rolling, and Picking on Sicily
Materially speaking, Grand Prince Uros didn’t have much. Rascia was the sole territory under Serbian rule, dominated by the capital of Ras, a sturdy castle atop a large hill nestled between two mountain ranges. Nevertheless, GP Uros had big plans for his small principality, plans that Catholic Europe had no business standing in the way of. Serbia would become an empire worthy of respect and admiration.
Step number one was to bring some of the surrounding rebel towns under control, and Skadar to the southwest seemed like a perfect first target. To this end, GP Uros ordered his men to meet up with Prince Uros, who’d been scouting the path to Skadar. This they did, and P Uros, the man who would either make or break his country, set off.
P Uros soon besieged Skadar, which was discovered to be under the governorship of General Durad. Durad appeared to have recruited a few extra mercenaries during P Uros’s journey, but it made no difference to the prince; he had to take Skadar all the same.
Apparently, Durad was well aware of his force’s numerical and qualitative superiorty. He decided to actively relieve himself of the siege, and so began P Uros’s first battle of what promised to be a very long series of wars.
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The Battle of Skadar – Winter, 1132
P Uros hurriedly arranged his infantry into a loosely formed line with his bodyguard on one flank and his light cavalry on the other. Then, all he could do was await rebels’ attack.
Durad’s bodyguard were the only cavalry, and P Uros knew he would have to use that to his advantage. As it turned out, Durad made that easy on the Serbian prince by directly charging the line of levies closest to him. P Uros charged into the melee and managed to sandwich Durad. The other squads of levies performed about as well as P Uros expected, meaning they ran soon after the combat began. Most of the army routed, including the scouts.
Thanks to his reckless charge, Durad himself wasn’t doing much except getting his bodyguards slaughtered. Eventually, the rest of P Uros’s men regained their nerve, and the prince directed them to focus their efforts on killing Durad, hoping the death of their general would crush the rebels’ morale. The levies lost heart again in their dash to attack Durad, but the scouts persevered and joined in fighting. Durad managed to fight free, but all of his bodyguards were dead.
At this point, the scouts were the only other Serbian unit with any fight left in them, and so P Uros ordered everyone to act as one cavalry unit. He then began riding wildly across the battlefield, hoping to either isolate one of the rebel squads for a cavalry charge or catch the roaming Durad, who’d taken off in pursuit of the fleeing levies. P Uros got a shot at Durad first when the battered and bloodied general noticed the Serbian cavalry trailing him. Knowing he was doomed anyway, Durad turned around and charged the Serbians, who finished him off in quick fashion.
With the death of their general, the rebel troops became fodder for the seemingly invincible Serbian horsemen. One charge after another sent them scrambling for the safety of Skadar’s walls.
Unfortunately for the rebels, their disorganized retreat allowed P Uros to ride right through the gates and finish them off in the town center. Not one rebel was spared.
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P Uros immediately set himself up as governor and went about improving Skadar’s economy. Serbia would now have to play a waiting game while its economy and military grew enough to support further expansion, a game the Byzantine Empire to the southeast and the Hungarians to the north would be sure to keep interesting.
P Uros was wed to Gordana of Vrattje, paving the way for further expansion of the Serbian bloodline.
While Serbia’s infrastructure was slowly improving, GP Uros got a chance to test his diplomacy skills when Byzantine diplomat Ioannis Chrysovergos approached Ras for trade rights. GP Uros accepted the offer and in turn proposed an alliance between Serbia and Byzantium, hoping their common religion would give some sense of unity. Chrysovergos accepted the proposal, and assuming treachery wasn’t far off, GP Uros had gained his country an important ally.
Desa of Raska came of age and was wed to a woman named Dragica. Soon, Jelena would come of age herself, and would likely see an interesting career in diplomacy seeing as how there were no worthwhile diplomats to be had in the country.
In the absense of anything else interesting to do, GP Uros sent Desa westward with his troops to conquer Vrhbosna, a small village. Meanwhile, Jelena had finally come of age and was en route to Italy where GP Uros hoped she would secure trade with the Venetian and Pisan merchants.
Desa commenced his attack on Vrhbosna, confident that its conquest would be swift. In reality, the battle was a bitter struggle that saw the local rebels fight to the last man in the village square. Desa received his first lesson on the grim realities of war as he saw his newly conquered people mourn the deaths of their defenders. He only hoped that things would settle down over time and that Hungary would look to more enticing targets.
Much to GP Uros’s relief, the pope called a crusade on Damascus. As far as he was concerned, the less soldiers his Catholic competitors had in Europe, the better.
Jelena’s first big diplomatic deal proved successful as she secured trade and an alliance with Hungary, further adding to Serbia’s political buffer. Later on, out of nowhere, an Almoravid diplomat named Hasan al-Jayyani approached GP Uros at Ras for trade and an alliance. GP Uros thought on it for a while and ultimately decided to decline the alliance lest his neighboring Christians take issue with his friendliness toward Islam.
After many years of overseeing his fledgling kingdom’s growth from Ras, GP Uros passed away, and P Uros (hereafter “Uros”) ascended to the throne.
Princess Jelena secured trade and an alliance with Venice. While Uros appreciated his sister’s diplomatic endeavors, he was also concerned about the fact that each new alliance with a neighboring people further reduced the number of potential directions in which Serbia could expand without severely damaging its political credibility. The Papal States and Sicily were the only remaining close targets, and since Uros didn’t feel like suffering the unbridled wrath of all of Catholicism by seizing Rome, he decided that Sicily was Serbia’s next obstacle on the road to becoming an empire.
Having served her purpose as a diplomat, Jelena was finally married to a young nobleman named Ivan of Kladovo. Uros appointed Ivan the new strategos of Skadar while he took the Serbian army and began what he anticipated to be a difficult war against Sicily by besieging the town of Ragusa.
As it turns out, Jelena’s hard work securing an alliance with Venice was wasted since the Venetians were evidently sympathetic to the Sicilians for some reason. That didn’t matter to Uros, though. The die was cast, and Serbia’s first true military test was underway.
Full of optimism due to his much larger force, Uros attacked Ragusa, which was manned by two units of spear militia and the unfortunate General Matteo Vallano. It was a quick battle with Vallano being quickly overwhelmed by the Serbians. In no time, Ragusa was Uros’s.
Now that he had a relatively large and well equipped settlement under his control. Uros sent newly minted diplomat Vladimir Ilic northwest to pick up where Jelena had left off. Uros also planned to start building ships as soon as possible so he could sail across the water and begin attacking Sicily in earnest. However, he was also wary of the fair amount of Byzantine troops that were lurking near the eastern borders. He hoped they wouldn’t have a sudden change of heart and squash his small country before proper resistance could be prepared.
Contrary to the response Uros anticipated, Sicilian diplomat Rainaldo Montalbano approached Ivan for peace. Ivan consented since he figured blitzing Sicily during a time of peace rather than of war would carry much more punch.
A young man named Bogoljub Stamenkovic was accepted into the royal family, and Uros hoped the boy would be a capable replacement as lord of Ragusa once he crossed the water into Sicily.
Diplomat Vladimir Ilic managed to secure an alliance and trade with the formidable Holy Roman Empire, an agreement that Uros hoped would make any mutual neighbors think twice before attacking Serbia.
In unrelated news, reports from several small farming villages throughout Rascia told of a strange man with a strange name traveling through the land. Not much was known about this man other than that he must be quite far from home.
Word from across the water was that the pope had called another crusade, this time on the mighty Zengid-held citadel of Halab. Uros wondered how many Catholics would die trying to take such a difficult target.
Vojislav, another of Uros’s sons, came of age. However, the boy would need some serious training to become a worthy leader. He was to accompany his father into Sicily where he would hopefully learn the ways of war.
At last, with an army he hoped would be capable of handling the Sicilian armies, Uros set sail across the water. His target was the large city of Reggio di Calabria, and when he arrived to besiege it, the Serbian grand prince found the city entirely unprepared for battle. Uros anticipated a quick victory.
After construction siege equipment, Uros waited for a suitable night to launch his attack. Surely, the sleepy garrison wouldn’t stand a chance. And, stand a chance it didn’t.
Uros was elated that the conquest of Sicily was finally underway, and he was sure that this was only the beginning of Serbia’s rise to worldwide prominence. So sure was he in fact, that he declared Reggio di Calabria Serbia’s new capital.
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