Unfortunately, I find my favourite mercenaries, the Breton Company, to be already employed. By me. Huh. I can get the 4500-man White Company for 375 pounds of gold, plus 18.457month, but that's a bit overkill, and I want to be able to afford a long war. So I hire the Saxon Band, the very cheapest company in range. Then I descend upon each of the Saxon armies in turn with my concentrated force:
I actually had to circle around the army in Strathearn and attack them from Clydesdale. If I marched from Argyll, they could march into Lothian before I arrived. On the other hand, the distance between Clydesdale and Strathearn is shorter than between Strathearn and any other province.
Boo-yah! Crovan's back on track! I shatter the Saxon armies and even manage to capture King Estmond's nephew in combat. Not too shabby.
A month later the last vestiges of the army are destroyed in Dunbar, just south of Lothian, though of the initial 22000-man army, only 14000 remain. Still, I think the English got the worse end of that deal, despite their starting manpower advantage.
Furthermore, the respite of throwing the English back allows me to disband my depleted levies and raise fresh reinforcements, adding nearly three thousand men to my total army.
King Estmond is not quite through yet, however, and he lands an army of 6000 men to besiege Ulster. I answer with 9000 men.
I am racking up some serious warscore now without taking a single holding.
Six thousand angry Scotsmen cut a swathe of destruction down through Northwestern England, chasing after fleeing remnants of armies and fresh levies, and the first English holding falls to siege. Several more follow.
The war is finally concluded in March 1312:
The war reparations put King Estmond into heavy debt, so I generously offer to shoulder some of his burdens:
Just like I have no idea how I lost my claim to England, so do I have no clue as to where my claims on Gloucester and Somerset came from. But I'm happy to pursue them.
The war is not terribly complicated. Many of the holdings captured earlier have but a fraction of their standard garrison size, so I can assault the castles with ease. By July 19th, every county within the Duchy of Lothian has been fully occupied. I leave 5000 men to siege castles in Cumberland and Northumberland while 14000 men march south to find some Saxons to murder on the field.
http://i.imgur.com/fQgr1.jpg[IMG]
Humiliated over and over again, King Estmond folds early in order to allow his rectum to recover.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/TRkoW.jpg
God it feels good to be on the conquering road again!
I immediately make my son Offa Duke of Somerset and Gloucester so that he'll stop whining about not having a title. I hate it when kids do that. To my horror, I find that he has become Maimed somehow during the war, and he only has a daughter to his name. I really hope the story of Máel-Máedoc the Sonless doesn't repeat itself.
In February 1313, he contracts Measles. And survives that as well. Tough kid, I'll give him that.
On the home front, things are looking quiet as well. The only vassals with negative opinions of me are the Duke of Ulster and Duchess of Connacht, both imprisoned, and the Duchess of Munster, with an opinion of -4, and is apparently fighting a small civil war where her two vassals are trying to depose her. The war is prolonged by the fact that neither side can muster enough troops to reduce each others' castles.
King Estmond dies sometime in the second quarter of 1314, probably of shame after being humiliated by the God-forsaken Crovans, of all people. I send his successor, Waltheof II, my deepest condolences. Since I'm spending the stamps anyway, I toss in a declaration of war along.
While I and Waltheof are doing our early-war maneuvering ballet, Prince Offa comes under fire from Duke Eadmund of York, who has arranged for my son to be excommunicated. Which means that Offa is a man, at last. They grow up so fast!
The target of the DoW is captured after just over three months.
Then most of England's army is shattered in Bristol.
It's a cakewalk from there on. Except that King Waltheof is a bit too eager to prove his worth to his nobility and refuses to peace unless I absolutely defeat him.
So during this disproportionately long war, my second and third sons comes of age:
I try to give my non-inheriting sons titles for roleplay reasons and to avoid the prestige loss from Unlanded Sons, but I think I'll have Waltheof stay in my court. Crovans are bad enough vassals without high Intrigue scores. In the meantime, I have hot-tempered but honest Sigered married to a Welsh girl of the Dinefwr family, hoping for his issue to get claims on Dyfed, the last county in Wales outside my realm.
It takes an embarrassingly long time for King Waltheof to see the writing on the wall:
One county. ONE. COUNTY. Tens of thousands of men died FOR ONE COUNTY, WALTHEOF. ARE YOU HAPPY?
In October 1319, Prince Offa completes his rite of manhood as the Pope agrees to lift the excommunication on him, at my request.
Soon thereafter, I have to tell Sigered's new wife not to plot murdering Offa. She will fit right in our family.
Maldred, my youngest child, graduates in the same month, taking after me:
I suppose he'll make a fair marshal for me or one of his brothers.
In Spring 1320 my period of peace and reflection is broken by King Raoul I of France.
Apparently I married my second daughter Eadhild off to him a while ago. Huh. I have an alliance with France, whaddya know?
I rise to the challenge, raise my personal levies and sail off to France. There are a few sieges and small skirmishes until the rebels are on the ropes. Then King Raoul accepts a white peace with them, to my utter confusion. It's like he
doesn't want to keep as many of his vassals in his dungeons as possible. I'll never understand continental politics.
I shake the confusion out of my head and march south to dick around in Catalonia, which is under Mauretanian rule, along with about half of Iberia, the rest being under the control of the Emirate of Murcia and the Sultanate of Al-Andalus.
I come face-to-face with a great Muslim host of 15 thousand men besieging French Barcelona and bravely avoid them, instead storming the holdings of Lleida, each of which were defended by less than fifty men. But they were really really really fierce-looking.
Less happily, the Duchess Hunydd of Normandy inherits the County of Dyfed somehow, bringing the province under the French Crown and making it that much harder for me to consolidate Wales.
Domestic intrigue rears its ugly head in September 1322 as Duchess Adalmode of Galloway, supported by Duke Máél-Dúin II of Connacht and Duchess Der-Lugdach of Ulster, conspires to Institute Elective Monarchy in Scotland. She is allowed to institute whatever the hell she wants in my dungeons. Duchess Der-Lugdach then conspires to Acquire the Kingdom of Ireland, and Acquires a dank cell instead.
Waltheof and Maldred give me two grandsons, Oswald and Malcolm respectively. There's a pool going in the court as to how long they will survive in the Crovan household.
Around this time, I take a casual look at the ledger:
Third place in the world. No longer just local opportunists, the Crovans are playing in the big boys' league now.
So it's time to stop wasting time and get to beating on the little kids:
It is time to replace the Muslim hegemony of Spain with Crovan rule. God have mercy on the smallfolk.