Thoughts and Stratagems on the Wisdom of pursuing War against the Ormeli
A Treatise
In recent years, an insidious threat has gotten ever closer to the relative seclusion of our Southern borders. From the lands where the midday Sun shines at its hardest, a new threat to our Holy Empire is come. And worst of all is, that virtually none have crossed blades with this threat on a scale greater than the skirmish thus far.
The Ormeli are knocking at our proverbial door-step. If we let this threat gather its forces in peace, as we have done in a most ignorant way thus far, then it will spread across our lands with fire and sword like a cancer will spread over the body of a man weakened by hunger. In situations such as this, we Swadians must take the fore and, like an able surgeon, extricate this threat before ever it crosses our borders. Defeat the tumour before it expands and deny the disease its birth-chance.
Thus far, these savages, these barbarians, these...creatures, for one of the men of Swadia cannot call these heretics any less, have not been denied their chance to hover over our borders like vultures awaiting carrion. Their outriders patrol our borders unchallenged and they come and go through our villages unopposed, gathering cattle, supplies and children by force, so as to be taken to the vulture's nest from whence these creatures herald forth. There, they feast upon our hard-spent labours, our cattle and our wine and our food, and do God-knows-what to our children. By the time these once-noble sons of Swadia return to their homeland, they only do so as raiders serving the Ormeli, devoid of any humanity or faith. Janissaries they are called and they sometimes lead the very sorties that force our children into Ormeli slavery.
As Swadians, we can no longer tolerate such offences to our honour. The border-lords, who hold the marches against all comers and who bravely serve the Holy Emperor in both war and peace, have long been begging for a war against these heretics. Their calls have gone unnoticed until now because of various reasons such as war with the Laurians in the North or war with the now-defunct Empire of Ellis. No longer!
Despite the great and overbearing bravery and determination of our noble warriors and landsknechts, however, some might pose the question of how to combat such a threat. The Ormeli are unusual because of their very nature. Unlike the Laurians, they do not march in rank and file, with pikes held proudly aloft. Unlike the treacherous scum of the Imperial State, they do not fire volleys of musketry from well-ordered ranks. Unlike the Vaegirs of the East they do not possess hardy footmen supported by superb units of horsemen ready to die for their masters. And, unlike the other threat from the South, the heathen followers of the Blood-God Filaharn, they do not come with the slaves of a hundred conquered nations in the tow of their armies, sending them first as a flesh-wave to weaken the foe.
No, the Ormelis are strange, even unique, in the way they wage war. They are chaotic, much like the scorched wastes from which they come from. Their forces are similar to those of the Khergits, yet with one crucial difference. Cavalry and the culture of the horse is important to them, yes, but they also have a seasoned infantry core to strengthen their hosts and provide a bulwark any foes that might come upon them. And both cavalry and footmen are well armoured, which is bizarre considering the heat of their wastelands.
Besides they fact that they have a numerous cavalry and an infantry of great fortitude in their ranks, worst of all is that almost all of these troops are armed with bows and that some are armed even with muskets and arquebuses to rival the Imperial State and the gunners of Gunther-Piedmont. So the Ormeli will pepper their foes at range with an iron-tipped hail, drawing swords and charging furiously like the fanatics they are whenever the enemy draws close.
How then, must a brave Swadian combat this plague upon the land? The methods are several and, though they are all varied, they all have the same purpose: to completely and utterly destroy the Ormeli if ever they step upon our borders in force, aiming to strike for one of our cities.
First of all, we Swadians must force the Ormeli to a true test of strength, a pitched battle. If we were to limit ourselves to warring as the Ormeli do, harassing the enemy from afar and avoiding actually entering honourable combat, it would lead to a horrible state of morale among the men, who would be eager for action and none too hesitant about plundering the baggage-trains of the enemy. Besides that, waging a war in such a way would also incur difficulties concerning supply and provision. A war in which decisive actions against the enemy are few and occasions to forage and live off the surrounding countryside and villages are slim, seeing as we would still be within the borders of Swadia and as such could not raid our own villages, would surely lead to situations such as famine and mutiny among the troops.
So, to neutralize all of these disadvantages, we must use our strength against the enemy, swiftly and surely. We must march into their own lands in force, always seeking open battle and always challenging them to use their entire strength against us, so that we can be given the chance to defeat it utterly by using our superior force of arms. Marching into the lands of the Ormeli will ensure the fact that any outriders they have in our territory will quickly retire to their own lands so as to assist the main host. This will give our villages a chance to fortify themselves against any future raids. Striking right into the heart of enemy territory will also take the battle to their own homes, forcing any Ormeli host inside our own borders to quickly turn back and march to see to the defence of their home. The fact that we would be fighting in enemy territory would also give our soldiers the chance to freely pillage the land and take anything they wish as their own, from the supplies of the Ormeli to their women. The fact that their villages would come at risk would also force the Ormeli to be all the more willing when it came to giving us pitched battle.
Besides living off the surrounding countryside, something which would bolster the morale of our soldiery, we should also take care to march in the open, in places where we can deploy our numbers to their fullest and where the Ormeli have to make use of their entire host if they wish to even challenge us. It is in places such as these that our pike squares and charges of heavy horse will ravage the enemy so utterly that they will never set foot in Swadia again.
With all the measures needed to force battle upon our foes taken and all the facets of the possible campaign discussed in some detail, now comes the discussion of a stratagem to defeat the heathens in open battle. While some of our less-committed commanders might be the adepts of holding back their troops in an act of over-caution and letting the enemy come to us, I propose we bring the battle to the enemy. We are Swadians and, as such, no lesser men can stand against us. We proved this by utterly crushing the Empire of Ellis and burning their heretic Emperor for his crimes. We shall prove this with the ragged men of the Southern wastes. We should start the battle by a thundering charge of our Chivalry. This in itself should serve to dishearten the enemy and make them lose the will to fight. But this, as I said, would be a battle of annihilation in which both sides commit themselves entirely so, to further endeavour towards the utter destruction of our foe, the cavalry would be followed by our brave Landsknechts.
With the cavalry charge breaking apart the line of Ormeli archers and gunners, our pike squares should be able to march unopposed towards the Ormeli ranks, skewering any that might stand in their way. Another advantage to this tactic would be that if the Ormeli cavalry chose to try and surround our Chivalrous Knights while they were fighting the Ormeli foot the Landsknechts would pounce upon their exposed rear, crushing them. If the Ormeli cavalry chose to pursuit our infantry then they would be held back as a cat is held back by the thorns of a hedge-hog. Any horseman who even tried to get close enough to shoot an arrow at our men would get skewered the moment he entered the range of our pikes. Both these movements, however, will leave our crossbowmen and sharp-shooters at risk but they are a negligible element in the order of battle.
After the Ormeli cavalry is crushed, caught between the hammer of the Landsknechts and the anvil of the Knights of Swadia, our brave footmen would then be free to shatter the Ormely infantry in a push of pike in which the heathens would stand no chance, seeing as they field no pikes of their own and fight in a very loose formation. By this point our Chivalry should be free to manoeuvre once more so if any Ormeli tried to retreat and make use of their advantage at range, our Cavalry would quickly be upon them, forcing them to hand-to-hand combat. If, by this point, any semblance of the Ormeli cavalry was left then our Knights and Demi-Lances could just as easily charge them and force them either to either battle or flight. For the proposed objectives of our plan, the death of any and all Ormeli cavalrymen would be much to the benefit of our cause.
Subsequent to these initial movements described above, the battle should devolve into a simple process of crushing any pockets of Ormeli resistance. To put it simply, allowing the Ormeli to retreat and stay at range is giving them an advantage they should not have, for they are strong when the enemy is far away. Once a body of hardened infantry closes with them, however, and denies them their bows and flintlocks then they will be rendered to nothing more than lambs facing an experienced butcher. The same goes for the cavalry of the Ormeli. They will be flamboyant when the foe is far away but when they are forced to actually engage in combat that will be their downfall. Thus, a small lance of Knights on hardy horses could crush a wing of Ormeli horsemen double their number in actual combat, if the damned heathens could be stopped from retreating. The above plan gives them a reason not to retreat, forcing them to stay and fight and thus neutralizing any advantage they could have in a battle of their choosing.
With proper application of the above plan, The Holy Empire of Swadia should have no difficulty in crushing the Ormeli whenever they deem to cross our borders seeking war and plunder. Our warriors on foot are far superior to their own at close-quarters and have a discipline unlike any other in Calradia while our mounted Chivalry will outfight and outride any heretic that dares stand against us. All in all, war with the Ormeli, far from being a perilous endeavour as many have described it, can actually turn into a quite profitable action, for once the Padishah, for so their leader is called, and his hosts are crushed the lands of the Ormeli will be laid down at our feet, ready to be conquered handily.
Penned by the hand of Gottfried, Captain of Marienburg