Actually wait, they’re further than ten seconds out.
Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest
- Thread starter Rolman
- Start date
- Mature Historic
- Location
- United States
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
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bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
Let's Waterloo this shit, delay, delay and confound, and finally at last lock into battle- just whenButcher's Prussians Zamoyski's other half of the cavalry and all the musketeers come screaming in and trap the bastards.
Let's Waterloo this shit, delay, delay and confound, and finally at last lock into battle- just when
Kir the Wizard
The Sun King
- Location
- Ukraine
Pancerni ("Armored Cossacks") became the main "Tatar-style" bow-and-shield cavalry after that.
Astra Myst
Do you want a wish?
- Location
- Milky Way Galaxy
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
Sertorius
Rebellious Legate
- Location
- Roma Invicta
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
The Petyhorcy mentioned by me before, were the Lithuanian equivalent of the Pancerni (known as Cossack Cavalry or Cossacks at the time, no relation to the Zaporozhian Cossacks).
Sertorius
Rebellious Legate
- Location
- Roma Invicta
By the way, I forgot to mention, that the Ruthenized/Polonized Tatars could have traditional names of course, but in time adopted localized family names. Some (like Ostryński, Puński, Kryczyński, Smolski) are virtually indistinguishable from typical Polish ones. Many (like Assanczukowicz, Jurewicz, Dawidowicz, Sulimanowicz, Bohdanowicz, Achmetowicz) are Ruthenian patronymics, that were transformed into permanent family names. Other have clearly foreign origins (Bałaban, Aksak, Kierdej, Ułan, Bajbus, Furs), but have assimilated well. One of my favourites is Edigey-Emirza Korycki.
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[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
Kir the Wizard
The Sun King
- Location
- Ukraine
Some theme music for a battle against the Crimeans
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6qUKWGG1A
Adding onto your note on surnames: some even fully retained their Turkic names, like the Cossack family of Kochubei (from Küçük Bey).
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6qUKWGG1A
Well, there is some relation - Petyhorcy, like Cherkasy, originally described the Christian Adyghe (later known as Circassians) that moved north to the GDL when most of Circassia became Muslim. They intermingled with the locals until the words became localized (Petyhorcy for the cavalry, Cherkasy for the Cossacks, or even for Ruthenians as a whole, sometimes).
Adding onto your note on surnames: some even fully retained their Turkic names, like the Cossack family of Kochubei (from Küçük Bey).
- Location
- Mists of Albion
Pethorcy also lacked the lances of the Pancerni, and were less well armoured, though they still used shields iirc
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
“Zawadówka.” Pt. I. August 9, 1575. A Battlefield.
- Location
- United States
You turn to Amurat. "Let them fight themselves. Screen them with your men, mirza."
"With pleasure," replies the Tatar captain. "Tatars of Lithuania," he booms, "it's time to go to work! Takbir!"
The Lipkas break ranks to a resounding Allahu Akbar! Horses whimper and snort loudly in reaction as their masters bid them forward with the flicking of reins and encouraging cries; arms reach downward or behind for quivers.
"Get ready," says Marszowski, still calm as ever, ducking slightly.
Your question is answered before you can ask it, as an arrow whizzes past your ear and, by the sound of it, breaks on the breastplate of someone behind you. You remember the dread wrought by that snapping Muscovite arrow, when it dented your cuirass and punched you harder than any man ever had, knocking your wind out. You took that boyar's hand for it. Thirteen months since you've last had to do this, survive this. But now you've got two thousand men to keep alive, not two hundred.
And more arrows are coming, sailing over the heads of the Lipkas, who are already diverting themselves to the left and right, a few tumbling and sliding off their horses or having their steeds shot out from under them. You can't tell how well they're doing against the enemy. God, you can't see the killer things until they're already flying by: little specks that grow and grow and then make a horse scream or man grunt or armor clank. You look around and the men, like you, are stooped low atop their horses, the few with shields using them. You grunt with frustration, with a sense of what's almost helplessness, and turn your head back to survey the scene to your front.
The Crimeans are nearly on top of you, probably only fifty feet away at this point, looking nothing like your native-son Lipkas, and yet looking oddly familiar: the men who want to kill you wear fur hats not unlike a szlachcic's – the peaks are taller, you notice, and others seem to wear black skullcaps – alongside tunics dyed in a variety of colors, ribboned with vertical stripes. You can see their black beards and their mouths chanting to their god. Their arrows continue to fly, denser and denser, now directly at you, and you clamp yourself down onto Sztylet's neck, praying for the misses to continue. Something grazes your helmet. At least, praise God, you can see the Lipkas' projectiles in profile flying into the mass of foemen, felling more than a few.
You weather the storm with your men, the sound of metal on metal and horses dying all about you. Someone near you sounds like he's choking.
All at once the enemy Tatars pull hard on their reins, their horses stumbling to a stop or rearing up as contact is nearly made directly with your line. You can see their shocked faces, wide eyes. It's remarkable that the Ostrogski boys haven't broken ranks yet; they must be scared or brave or both.
"Now, lord prince, now!"
They must have thought you wouldn't stand your ground, though God knows what the casualties may be. But whoever's saying that is right. In an eyeblink you find your arm reaching for and firing one of your three pistols, and the din of hooves are at once drowned out by terrible thunder. It's apparent that your entire force was merely waiting for a first shot, and in a matter of seconds you find your ears screech-ringing and the air around you wreathed in acrid smoke. It's a devastating volley: through the haze you see a heap of writhing men and horses stretching back at least ten yards, and the survivors making a full turn about. All you can hear are your own eardrums, but the ones not killed outright must be raising a mournful wail, the way the ground's come alive with the dying.
The horses want to break badly. Even the strong ones bred for warfighting, like your very own Sztylet, pace in place, chomping on their bits and trying to step back. But we are not scared animals, not all the time, at least.
No, we are not. You raise your lance high and shout at the top of your lungs, though you cannot hear yourself:
"Saint Michael, Saint George! Bóg nam radzi!"
And you will your horse forward with your mind on survival and a Christian victory, in your peripheral seeing pistol-arms extend and sabers point forward, lances dropping down into a couched horizontal. You madly reach for your second pistol, aim at nothing in particular, and squeeze the trigger. You scream and scream and scream, like you're being born, howling with pride and fear and anger. They're running. The Tatars are running. They must be. Through your ringing, plunged-underwater ears, you can hear the boom of guns and over a thousand men joining you in an angry shriek.
Sztylet weaves through the first volley's carnage without need for your aid and now it's nothing but open field, peppered with men and horses lying still. Out of the powder-cloud you can now see the Tatars riding breakneck for the blue-flagged hilltop from whence they came. Your Lipkas, holding their Lithuanian standards high, ride parallel to the fleeing Crimeans some distance away, peppering them with brown-black streaks that lose themselves in the clumps and clusters of riders.
You breathe and fight the urge of reaching for your third and last pistol, even as the Tatars turn back in the saddle to loose their arrows mid-retreat. Your charge is moving at about the same speed as their retreat, and they're still well within range of the men's pistols and carbines, which they use to good effect. The Lipkas have them boxed in and under fire on their flanks, and you feel as if this initial Tatar attack must be a failure.
Well, breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe! You cannot give in to bloodlust, at least not yet: there's still the issue of the camp, which you can no longer clearly see on account of your own right flank. And Tatars are more than known to feint retreats – you cast your eyes up to the hill where the sky-blue banners fly, surrounded by glimmering armored men. Who knows what may await you atop it. Or behind it.
There may still be time. An emphatic may. The flanks haven't parted from each other yet, which means that people, once more, may still be able to hear you, or at least note if your banner suddenly changes direction. But those gleaming mirzas or whoever they may be up there… What a prize – for capture, for the sword, anything. Your head's all foggy, everything is (literally) moving very fast, but you do your best to make a decision.
[] Continue the charge.
God is with us. We have a bull's head of heavy troops and horns made of horse-archers; we can withstand a counter-charge and then some. And it's not as if we can't take the hill and *then* change directions.
[] Attempt to turn towards the camp.
Put this mystery to rest once and for all. The Lipkas can become a blocking force to protect the flank we'll have to expose to bear down on the camp. Perhaps attacking their tents – which may contain some of their loot, spare horses, slaves, things of that nature – will spoil whatever surprise they could have planned for us in the hills.
[] Halt the charge; allow the Lipkas to pursue, and dispatch a rider back to Zamoyski's camp.
Let the skirmishers do what they're meant to do, and allow the heavy cavalry to catch their breath and reload their guns. In the meantime – and recall that it will be perhaps a seven-minute round trip – dispatch a messenger back to Lord Zamoyski to explain the situation and solicit his cavalry, if they're not already on their way.
[] write-in.
No more than a few sentences.
"With pleasure," replies the Tatar captain. "Tatars of Lithuania," he booms, "it's time to go to work! Takbir!"
The Lipkas break ranks to a resounding Allahu Akbar! Horses whimper and snort loudly in reaction as their masters bid them forward with the flicking of reins and encouraging cries; arms reach downward or behind for quivers.
"Get ready," says Marszowski, still calm as ever, ducking slightly.
Your question is answered before you can ask it, as an arrow whizzes past your ear and, by the sound of it, breaks on the breastplate of someone behind you. You remember the dread wrought by that snapping Muscovite arrow, when it dented your cuirass and punched you harder than any man ever had, knocking your wind out. You took that boyar's hand for it. Thirteen months since you've last had to do this, survive this. But now you've got two thousand men to keep alive, not two hundred.
And more arrows are coming, sailing over the heads of the Lipkas, who are already diverting themselves to the left and right, a few tumbling and sliding off their horses or having their steeds shot out from under them. You can't tell how well they're doing against the enemy. God, you can't see the killer things until they're already flying by: little specks that grow and grow and then make a horse scream or man grunt or armor clank. You look around and the men, like you, are stooped low atop their horses, the few with shields using them. You grunt with frustration, with a sense of what's almost helplessness, and turn your head back to survey the scene to your front.
The Crimeans are nearly on top of you, probably only fifty feet away at this point, looking nothing like your native-son Lipkas, and yet looking oddly familiar: the men who want to kill you wear fur hats not unlike a szlachcic's – the peaks are taller, you notice, and others seem to wear black skullcaps – alongside tunics dyed in a variety of colors, ribboned with vertical stripes. You can see their black beards and their mouths chanting to their god. Their arrows continue to fly, denser and denser, now directly at you, and you clamp yourself down onto Sztylet's neck, praying for the misses to continue. Something grazes your helmet. At least, praise God, you can see the Lipkas' projectiles in profile flying into the mass of foemen, felling more than a few.
You weather the storm with your men, the sound of metal on metal and horses dying all about you. Someone near you sounds like he's choking.
All at once the enemy Tatars pull hard on their reins, their horses stumbling to a stop or rearing up as contact is nearly made directly with your line. You can see their shocked faces, wide eyes. It's remarkable that the Ostrogski boys haven't broken ranks yet; they must be scared or brave or both.
"Now, lord prince, now!"
They must have thought you wouldn't stand your ground, though God knows what the casualties may be. But whoever's saying that is right. In an eyeblink you find your arm reaching for and firing one of your three pistols, and the din of hooves are at once drowned out by terrible thunder. It's apparent that your entire force was merely waiting for a first shot, and in a matter of seconds you find your ears screech-ringing and the air around you wreathed in acrid smoke. It's a devastating volley: through the haze you see a heap of writhing men and horses stretching back at least ten yards, and the survivors making a full turn about. All you can hear are your own eardrums, but the ones not killed outright must be raising a mournful wail, the way the ground's come alive with the dying.
The horses want to break badly. Even the strong ones bred for warfighting, like your very own Sztylet, pace in place, chomping on their bits and trying to step back. But we are not scared animals, not all the time, at least.
No, we are not. You raise your lance high and shout at the top of your lungs, though you cannot hear yourself:
"Saint Michael, Saint George! Bóg nam radzi!"
And you will your horse forward with your mind on survival and a Christian victory, in your peripheral seeing pistol-arms extend and sabers point forward, lances dropping down into a couched horizontal. You madly reach for your second pistol, aim at nothing in particular, and squeeze the trigger. You scream and scream and scream, like you're being born, howling with pride and fear and anger. They're running. The Tatars are running. They must be. Through your ringing, plunged-underwater ears, you can hear the boom of guns and over a thousand men joining you in an angry shriek.
Sztylet weaves through the first volley's carnage without need for your aid and now it's nothing but open field, peppered with men and horses lying still. Out of the powder-cloud you can now see the Tatars riding breakneck for the blue-flagged hilltop from whence they came. Your Lipkas, holding their Lithuanian standards high, ride parallel to the fleeing Crimeans some distance away, peppering them with brown-black streaks that lose themselves in the clumps and clusters of riders.
You breathe and fight the urge of reaching for your third and last pistol, even as the Tatars turn back in the saddle to loose their arrows mid-retreat. Your charge is moving at about the same speed as their retreat, and they're still well within range of the men's pistols and carbines, which they use to good effect. The Lipkas have them boxed in and under fire on their flanks, and you feel as if this initial Tatar attack must be a failure.
Well, breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe! You cannot give in to bloodlust, at least not yet: there's still the issue of the camp, which you can no longer clearly see on account of your own right flank. And Tatars are more than known to feint retreats – you cast your eyes up to the hill where the sky-blue banners fly, surrounded by glimmering armored men. Who knows what may await you atop it. Or behind it.
There may still be time. An emphatic may. The flanks haven't parted from each other yet, which means that people, once more, may still be able to hear you, or at least note if your banner suddenly changes direction. But those gleaming mirzas or whoever they may be up there… What a prize – for capture, for the sword, anything. Your head's all foggy, everything is (literally) moving very fast, but you do your best to make a decision.
[] Continue the charge.
God is with us. We have a bull's head of heavy troops and horns made of horse-archers; we can withstand a counter-charge and then some. And it's not as if we can't take the hill and *then* change directions.
[] Attempt to turn towards the camp.
Put this mystery to rest once and for all. The Lipkas can become a blocking force to protect the flank we'll have to expose to bear down on the camp. Perhaps attacking their tents – which may contain some of their loot, spare horses, slaves, things of that nature – will spoil whatever surprise they could have planned for us in the hills.
[] Halt the charge; allow the Lipkas to pursue, and dispatch a rider back to Zamoyski's camp.
Let the skirmishers do what they're meant to do, and allow the heavy cavalry to catch their breath and reload their guns. In the meantime – and recall that it will be perhaps a seven-minute round trip – dispatch a messenger back to Lord Zamoyski to explain the situation and solicit his cavalry, if they're not already on their way.
[] write-in.
No more than a few sentences.
- Location
- United States
Well, this is going a lot better than our last battle! Now we've still got to figure out what scheme the Tartars are up to, even if we seem to have already offput it.
The big question is the hill. Was their plan to lure a Commonwealth force over it through a baiting attack? Feigning retreats to draw out and punish pursuits is nomad tactics 101, so it seems like a reasonable enough premise.
The big question is the hill. Was their plan to lure a Commonwealth force over it through a baiting attack? Feigning retreats to draw out and punish pursuits is nomad tactics 101, so it seems like a reasonable enough premise.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
[X] Attempt to turn towards the camp.
It'll be hard on Stanislaw's Lipka, but taking the camp is kinda the big win button here, either pushing the Crimeans to come directly into Samaritan lances and saber, or to disperse and withdraw back home. And either way, after setting the terms on the battle like that, there'll be points to reconnect with the other half of the army with Zamoyski's forces.
It'll be hard on Stanislaw's Lipka, but taking the camp is kinda the big win button here, either pushing the Crimeans to come directly into Samaritan lances and saber, or to disperse and withdraw back home. And either way, after setting the terms on the battle like that, there'll be points to reconnect with the other half of the army with Zamoyski's forces.
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Write In: Attempt to turn towards the camp, after dispatching fast riders to inform Zamoyski that battle has been joined.
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