South of Cuba
June, 1603
"Ok, boys, that's the plan, and I think it's not too bad. But, well, you know what they say about plans. So, don't get too stuck on it; there's always going to be some luck in the thing. If it comes right to it, you can't go too far wrong if you just get alongside a Spaniard and damn well shoot the buggers."
The captains nodded; they knew about plans, and they also knew that a Norwegian ship of 60 guns was a match for a Spaniard of 72. Outnumbered or none, they expected to win. There was confidence in their steps and their looks as they dispersed to the launches, heading back to their own ships. Soon, sails were being rolled out and boarding pikes gotten out of storage all across the Norwegian fleet. Shouts of "Run out your guns!" and "Out tompions!" floated on the fitful dawn breeze. The Spaniards were downwind, between the Norwegians and Jamaica, with nowhere to run. They'd have to fight. It looked as though they were willing enough; the entire fleet, more than sixty ships, was flying battle ensigns, gold and scarlet flowing lazily as they tacked north.
Naval battles of the Caribbean campaign. Norway smash!
The Spanish captain was icily correct as he surrendered his sword. The moaning of wounded men was stunningly loud without the rolling cannonades that had assaulted Trygve's ears for hours; only at the fringes, where frigates pursued the fleeing Spaniards, was there still any firing. He looked about; nobody could say the Spaniards hadn't fought to the end, the
Madre de Dios had been battered near to wreckage. There wasn't enough left of the main mast for even a jury rig; it would have to be put under tow. Men were lying all about the deck, fallen where they'd tried to stop the boarders from the
Håkon Håkonsson; the little murdering pieces along the railing were all dismounted. The gun decks would be worse. There wasn't a single gunport left intact, they'd all been smashed into a long hole going the length of the ship. He decided not to inspect it until the surgeon had had a chance; he was as unsqueamish as the next Yngling, but there was nothing pleasant about looking at the ruin of bodies. He'd have to think about a prize crew; his own casualties had been heavy, it would be a difficult job getting both ships back to port. Water, a watch over the Spanish prisoners, he'd have to detail someone to confiscate their arms, and there was always the risk of some zealous underofficer setting a fire to deny the ship to the Norwegians. Work, work, work...
Even so - he looked again at the Spanish captain. His face was a mask of control over utter rage and despair. Better the problems of victory.
Siege of Cuzco
August, 1604
Einar heaved an exhausted sigh. The siege was not going well; he'd had to put down another three of the Inca auxiliaries. The smallpox seemed to get them much faster than his own men, or the Spaniards. At least they worked well with a touch of the whip, not like the Iroquis. Useless in a fight, of course, but then he didn't really have enough ammunition for his hirdsmen, anyway. He looked out at the Spanish works; no real cannon, just little three-inchers unloaded from some ship. They'd be in range tomorrow. He wasn't sure whether his improvised earth barrier would strengthen the drystone walls enough to stand up to them; still, it would take them at least a few days to batter a hole. He reckoned out again the days that remained of his life. Spanish guns making a breach, maybe three days plus however long they could hold the breach. Several months if the embrasures worked. Running out of food, two months. Running out of water, two weeks unless it rained. Running out of ammunition, two, perhaps three Spanish assaults, but they hadn't made any in a while. Tired of losing men, perhaps. Mutiny among the men, an unknown quantity. It depended on whether they believed his story that the Spanish would let the Inca sacrifice prisoners to stop the smallpox. It had worked so far, hird regulars weren't usually very bright. Some of them might even still be hoping to win, and get out of here. He decided that he would shift his mental bet with himself; the water looked like the most likely option, it hadn't rained in a month.
He fingered the little pistol in his pocket; a gaudy thing, taken from a Spanish officer with more money than sense. It would be inaccurate beyond three paces. But good enough for his purposes. Ynglings were not taken alive.
San Jose hill
May, 1605
"Stand firm, you dogs! I'll gut the first man who turns!"
It was no use; the regulars had had enough. Harald suited action to words, running his sword through the kidney of a young German who had thrown down his musket and was turning to run; but he could not stop the flood wave of rout. The hird was not going to stand still and be cannonaded, and that was that. For the hundredth time he wished he'd had just one more regiment, one more
company, of the Guards to send. Just half an hour, fifteen minutes even, until his counter-attack worked its way through the hills and came in on the Spanish flank. He had hoped the hird would stand that long; but no. Three little cannon, popgun three-pounders from some sloop posted here against pirates, had sent his last reserve running; and now the Spanish regiments were shouting their triumph as they came forward, advancing on
his flank. There was nothing for it; he'd have to disengage, pull back, and hope he could rally enough men to make a stand short of Havana. He was almost crying from frustration as he turned about to canter back to his staff. They'd been so close! Just this one battle, and the Spaniards would have had nowhere left to run. They could have held Cuba forever, perhaps even retaken Jamaica.
The Cuban campaign :
Three guns, and half an hour; of such things are empires made, and lost.
Håkon's Hall, Bergen
January, 1609
"Brothers, we must face facts. Our army is just not good enough."
"We did well enough in Poland." The older man spoke in the tone of one who knows perfectly well that his objection will be met, but who wants to have it on record as being shot down.
"Yes, against garrisons and trained bands! The Piast's regulars were all away in the south, fighting the Hungarians. What battles did we win against regular troops in the open field? Mexico, Cuba, even Danzig - when did we face equal numbers and prevail?"
"True. But what's to be done? There are not enough Ynglings to make the Guard our only army; and if we give the
stril good weapons and training, how are we going to keep them down?"
"Well - it need only be a temporary expedient. In a few generations there will be enough of us to do our own fighting. Anyway, how do we keep them down now? The regular hird outnumbers the Guard three to one."
"And we are careful to station German with Russian, Iroquis with Balt. Half the men in our regular units don't speak the language of the other half! We don't give them powder until the day before a battle, and drill them half as much as the Guard. We give the sergeants privileges over the men, and the Norse privileges over the Germans. So we creak along, and put down the occasional revolt easily. But it's not a system for making good fighting men."
"Well, that's just it! We
need good fighting men. Suppose we gave them more privileges?"
"No. It's not the downtrodden slave who rises up, it's the man who has a little, enough to see what more he might want."
"Do you have a better idea? We can't go about losing wars every five years!"
There was silence for perhaps half a minute. The King stirred uneasily; he had let his ministers argue freely, as was Yngling custom, ready to step in and impose the consensus when it was reached. Usually the agreement would come much faster, though; Yngling thought like Yngling, as the saying went. At length the Minister of Trade spoke; he had been diffidently silent while his more senior colleagues of War and Outland Relations argued.
"I have an idea, though perhaps you won't like it."
"Well, nobody else has any. Speak out, brother."
"It seems to me there are two problems. One, we haven't enough Ynglings. Two, we can't really trust the regular hird, because we can't give them the opportunity to rise to our level. There just isn't enough wealth in Norway, and anyway someone has to do the scutwork. I think we can solve both problems. Brothers, my father has two sons; he also has three daughters."
"Well? What's your point?"
"Suppose we recognise our sisters' children as Ynglings?"
A less disciplined group might have had uproar, but one did not rise to command Ynglings without command of oneself. Besides, the idea was so radical that it took time to shock. The Minister of War was first to recover; he spoke reasonably, in the tone of one pointing out an obvious flaw in another's plan, overlooked no doubt simply by a minor bobble.
"Only men carry the blood of the Ynglings. Women don't have the spirit that gives the mind form, they only carry the life essence. Children of a father who isn't descended from Olav or Magnus, well, they just won't have the Yngling spirit, that's all there is to it. You can call them Ynglings, but they won't be, any more than you can make bread out of rock by saying it so!"
Trade snorted. "Ridiculous superstition. You've been reading too much Aristotle; what does some ignorant wog know about breeding? If you'd visit your estate for more than swiving the
stril girls, you'd know that the female is just as important as the male. Try getting fat pigs with thin sows, and see how far you get!"
Outland Relations broke in. "But humans are not pigs. The body is one thing, but what about the spirit? That's shaped by the Yngling essence that we all carry."
"Well, brother, I'll match my sister Gudrun against you any day. Female she may be, but she has the fighting guts of any three men I know."
"Still - let us suppose we let the women in. Come to think of it, some of my nephews are quite scrappy little buggers, might not do too badly in the Guard. How does that solve the problem of trusting the hird?"
"Well, in the first place, it doubles the number of Ynglings. That's a start right there. But in the second place, who are all these women of ours going to marry?"
"The upper layer of
stril, presumably, and sometimes their more distantly related Yngling cousins. Same as now."
"Ah, but what if we permit soldiers with their time expired to marry Yngling women?"
"Then their children will be Ynglings..." The minister of War's face lit up in a slow, almost unwilling smile. "And we'll be able to trust them, because they'll have a hope of joining the established order without the risk of a revolution!"
"Exactly. Of course, we're still going to have to change our recruiting policies. Right now we get our soldiers from the dumbest, poorest part of the population, because we don't want to give the smart ones guns. But we don't want the dumb ones to be marrying our sisters and, even worse, fathering our nephews! So, we'll have to start recruiting among the tradesmen, the farmers, that sort of man. It'll take time."
"Yes. Another thing - we still don't want any
strils thinking they can fight as well as an Yngling. Maybe we can look into the Guard drill - it's been a while. There might be something we can improve. Right now a Guard unit can beat three times its number of regulars, and I don't see any reason to change that. So if the regulars get better, the Guard must, too."
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Demographic note : At this time there are about 60000 male Ynglings alive, meaning maybe 20000 of an age to fight. (Of course, the EU2 engine shows me with about 140000 casualties from this little fracas, but that's ridiculous. Divide by ten, and call most of them regulars.) Acknowledging females as Ynglings would double the raw number, though not the fighting number (even Trade isn't that radical, not yet anyway); but it halves the doubling time. On the down side, the Minister of War has a point : Every one of those male Ynglings is descended in the male line from one of the two Yngling brothers alive in 1066. That means they all share the same Y chromosome. (Well, in law and theory, anyway. Actual fact might be something else, fidelity in humans being what it is. Still, adultery tends to be with people of one's own class - meaning Yngling males, presumably.) This would no longer be true if you permitted descent in the female line. Of course, ethnic identity is rarely constructed along rational lines!
As you can perhaps tell, I did not enjoy having the crap kicked out of my armies on a regular basis. It seems that in fine-tuning my DP sliders for economic competition, I've been falling behind in the military. Well, no more! Quality and Offensive is the order of the day. (Indeed, you'd think an Yngling Guards unit would be quite offensive just from the stench of arrogance rising from it. The looks down the nose ought to kill at a hundred paces.) I'll also get more freedom and less plutocratic. Inno will remain low, however; the ones lucky enough to marry into the Yngling family will not be wanting to extend any of their new-found privileges to the ones still outside, dirty
strils that they are! And also, there's the
plus royaliste que le Roi effect, where the new Ynglings want to show that they aren't soft on the outsiders. There's a safety valve that co-opts the best and the brightest, now; but if you aren't lucky enough to marry an Yngling, Norway is about to become a rather worse place for you.
On a more comic relief note, I wonder what this guy thinks he's doing? I mean, death to the Yngling oppressor pigs, sure, but - a one man army?
I haven't been idle on the infrastructure front, either. Governors all over Russia!
And Germany, of course, but I'll only show the one picture. Burgundy's looks rather more impressive anyway, his provinces are much smaller so the little men are closer together. He's building judges over the whole of northern Germany, simultaneously.