Lieutenant Colonel Levi Dinófs barked the order to advance. The field was a swirling chaos of blood, smoke, and lead, and he was leading the 1st Banat into that chaos. The colours flapped in the light wind, showing the twin eagles of the Regiment, hoisted proudly by ensigns to stand beside the eagle standard of the Transylvanian Empire. They were in Aleppo, in some dusty plain near the Euphrates river. Passively Levi recalled his schooling, remembering that the Euphrates had been one of the birthplaces of human civilization, and he smiled as he thought it was fitting then that the same locale should see the dissolution of civilized creatures. When the bayonet, blade, and the pike won battles, there was no place for civilization, just the rage, terror, and fear of those moments of slaughter.
The guns hammered behind the Colonel, more guns that had ever been seen on a battlefield in history, slamming back on their carriages and spewing destruction through the Spanish line. The Spanish guns spat back a feeble response, but they were horrendously outnumbered, and every shot from them provoked a barrage of roundshot towards the smoke of their battery. The Transylvanians had brought more to bear in this fight of anything but cavalry, and even then the Spaniards only outnumbered the Transylvanian cavalry by a trifle.
The Emperor had come to see the battle, making sure to sit a safe distance away from the danger of the Spanish guns, a decision that Levi was disappointed at, as if Ferenc were to suddenly die, then Kázmér would become Emperor, and Levi was sure that he would be made Grand Marshal of Transylvania’s army. He shrugged. If Ferenc were to die then that would be splendid, but he would not actively try to see that fate unfold. Truth be told, he liked where he was, in command of the 1st Banat – the Battered Bastards of Banat. The most prestigious regiment in the entire Empire, having fought in nearly every major engagement Transylvania had either marched to or been thrown into. The only other regiment that came close to its glory was the 12th Hussars, who Levi noted with satisfaction, were also here in Aleppo, holding the left flank against attacks by the Spanish cavalry.
It total three of Transylvania’s armies had combined for this battle; the Army de Mihály, led by General Jóska Csapó; the Army de Stiboricz, led by General Nikola Dávid, and the Army de Koloszvár, led by General Zsigmond Pintér. All of them came under the direct command of Marshal Dömötör Zabanius. 12,000 horse, 24,000 infantry, and 240 guns and their gunners and crews. The Spanish, by comparison, fielded an army of 13,000 horse, 11,000 infantry, but only 20 guns.
The drums were beating the battle hymn of the Empire; For Glory we Fight, working the men into the insensible rage that battles always ended up devolving into. It was not the glorious charge of the cavalry that won battles, or the thunder of the great guns, but the bayonet, pike, and ferocity of the infantry, and at the centre of the Transylvanian line, the 1st Banat marched solidly forward, cheering and shouting the words of the Empire’s battle song aloud.
“Raise thy arms, the battle is near
Through the mud and waters clear
The blood is colouring the lands again
A sign of Victory the winds will send!”
Lieutenant Colonel Levi Dinófs sang with them as they marched forward, a roundshot from one of the few Spanish guns ripping through the ranks, sergeants shouted and the men closed ranks. The music still played; it would stop when the regiment started taking heavy casualties, as the bandsmens other job was to take wounded men back from the battle line to the waiting surgeons, their instruments sharpened and polished behind the regiment. Levi prayed he would not have to be on the receiving end of those scalpels and clamps, saws and vices. He would rather die from a Spanish musketball or pike than go through that horror.
Captain Hinrik Johannsson reined his horse in beside the Colonel’s at the flank of the regiment. “Still here Captain?” Levi greeted him with a grin. Hinrik had been sent from Scandinavia to assist in the invasion of Lithuania, but had decided to stay with the 1st Banat for the duration of the war. The Lithuanians were beaten and bloody, and so the man who had come to the Empire to advise about winter warfare found himself staring at an enemy army in the dusty stifling heat of Syria. “Still here, sir.”
Levi gestured towards the awaiting Spaniards, their buffed breastplates and polished pike heads shining in the midday sun. “How long will these ones last, do you think?” he fished out the watch from his pocket, “I say we’ll be done and over with them in time for supper.”
Both men knew that despite the brand new looking equipment of the Spanish army, the men they faced were veteran troops that had fought a bitter withdraw from Anatolia down here into the Levant. Only the Army de Koloszvár, returning from their capture of Jerusalem had cut off the Spanish withdraw, forcing them to fight here in Aleppo. Captain Hinrik shrugged, “Probably, sir. Cavalry will likely have a harder time than us.”
Levi eyed the flanks, where the mass of Transylvanian cavalry were following the advance of the infantry. They would ward off Spanish cavalry, and if the opportunity arose, charge home into a gap that the infantry made. The increasing pace of the drums noted that the armies were approaching musket range. Levi nodded to Hinrik, “I would trouble you to return to your post now, Captain.”
“Sir.” Captain Hinrik tipped his hat to the Colonel and spun around to take his place in front of the light company out front of the battalion.
The drums kept beating as Levi ordered the men onwards, telling the men just what he thought of the Spanish troops awaiting them. The army marched solidly onwards as Spanish musket volleys spat lead towards them. The Transylvanians would save their volley until the last moment, when every bullet would count, and then charge forward and take their pikes and blades into the brutal close combat fight. It was a messy tactic, but the Transylvanians outnumbered their Spanish counterparts nearly two to one.
The cannons behind Levi stopped firing, and the battlefield was filled with an odd silence. It wasn’t truly silent, but without the huge guns constant booming he fancied he could pick out the individual sounds of men marching, the dull thumps of equipment slapping against bodies, and then the Spanish line crashed in a ferocious volley, and his horse reared up, braying in panic as blood spurted from its throat. Levi cursed and threw his feet out of the stirrups and rolled aside as the beast went down, legs kicking wildly. A sergeant ran forward and looked to the Colonel for permission and Levi nodded and the sergeant put a bullet into the horse’s head.
“God damnit.” Levi cursed at no one in particular as he marched beside the men, “damn horse cost me a god damn fortune.” Some of the men grinned as they heard their commander cursing, but he yelled at them to keep advancing, they were nearly in range.
The men closed fast, eager to get to the destruction and chaos that would immortalize them. Other soldiers might have faltered as they faced an enemy line so willing to give them battle, but the Battered Bastards of Banat cheered as they advanced and a final Spanish volley shot towards them, throwing a handful of men down.
“Halt!” Lieutentant Colonel Levi Dinófs shouted, his order being relayed down the line by officers and sergeants.
“Present!” The men in front lifted their muskets to shoulders, looking as if the entire line had made a slight turn to the right.
He swept his sword forward and shouted the order, “Fire!”
Four hundred muskets kicked back from men of the 1st, and the thunder grew all along the Transylvanian battle line as 10,000 musket balls flew towards the Spanish line, flaying it open and dropping men like flies. The brave of those, the ones that had been in the front rank, knew only smoke and pain in their last moments, some being hit with a dozen or more musket balls in a handful of seconds.
“Charge!” Levi was screaming it as he ran forward with the men, order lost. The 1st was advancing far past the rest of the Transylvanian line, speeding towards the disordered Spanish line. It would be close, if the Spaniards could fix their ranks and had enough loaded muskets, the charge would be flayed open, but if not the 1st would be the first into the Spanish line, and the harbinger of death to the Spanish army.
The men were screaming, a keening sound that chilled to the bone. They were not men any longer, they were beasts of war, the sons of the pagan Gods of old, come to exact their revenge on a world that had scorned them. The Spanish line didn’t have enough muskets loaded, and neither were its pikes reformed in time to meet the charge of Banat’s 1st. The lines crashed, and the rest of the Transylvanian army soon followed, their overwhelming numbers easily allowing the Spanish line to be overlapped. Transylvanian infantry, hailing from all across the Empire; Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the Middle East – all crashed together in a maelstrom of violence and death.
Lieutenant Colonel Levi Dinófs was screaming at his men to kill them, to flay them apart, to feast on their souls, and the men were screaming their battle cries with him, in all the languages of the Empire. It was impossible for the Spanish to hold, God himself wouldn’t have been able to stand against such ferocity, but somehow they clung desperately on, fighting tooth and nail for every yard, each inch they gave bought dearly with the lives of the Empire’s soldiers. On Levi’s right, the standard of the 6th of Burgas fell into Spanish hands, but the men bellowed in rage as they saw their flag being dragged backwards and surged forward again.
This is how the world will end. The thought hit him in the middle of parrying a stab from Spanish sergeant’s pike, and halted him for long enough for the Spaniard to come around for another attack that was only stopped by the body of a Transylvanian soldier that fell across the outstretched pike as it came forward. Levi laughed as he swung down with his sword, cutting open the sergeants skull.
“Forward! Kill them! Push them back God damnit!” Sergeant Hegyi was shouting beside him, and the men blindly obeyed, giving another push forward, and suddenly the Spanish line was crumbling. It happened almost as if a wave had come and rippled through the line, snatching away men here and there, and suddenly Transylvanian soldiers were pouring through the gaps and the Spanish were fleeing, abandoning their weapons, or holding their hands up it surrender. The lucky ones had their surrender accepted and were guarded by sergeants or officers, but most were simply killed as the giant mob of soldiers charged forward.
The cavalry came then. They had seen off the Spanish cavalry force, and the Spanish cavalry had retreated once the infantry had crumbled, and the Transylvanian horsemen poured into the gaps along with the infantry, cutting and slashing down, breaking free of the constricting mobs and galloping across the plain, killing as they pleased.
Levi stopped to catch his breath and grabbed his canteen to take a drink, but a musketball had punched a hole in it and drained the water. He wiggled in and heard the bullet clinking inside the canteen and laughed manically, happy to have escaped death’s grip once more.
“In fire, cannon, pike, and bayonet!” He shouted to what remained of his battalion, completing the thought that had struck him dumb in the middle of the battle. The men cheered.
The Battle of Aleppo, February 14th, 1576
