Battle of Karotaga

General Jakazri's Force:
30,000 Infantry
5000 Cavalry
100 Guns (approx. 1200 crew)

The Battle of Karotaga was fought on the 20th of October 1844 upon a shallow forested hill nearby the village of Karotaga in Kamar, southern Asmukhar, as part of the Imperial Civil War. A rebel Republican force under the command of General Legan Padina attacked an Imperial force under the command of Field Marshal Paron Varega. Both sides dealt heavy casualties to one another, and both came close to breaking the other on numerous occasions, but each time failed to achieve a decisive rout. The following day General Padina was forced to surrender when Imperial reinforcements under General Keyan Jakazri arrived from the rear.

Some historians classify the Battle of Karotaga as two separate battles in quick succession, due to the fact that there were two notable periods of fighting with a lull in-between; the first period lasted from approximately midday to 2PM, and the second period lasted from 4PM to 7PM. The break between these two periods saw continued artillery bombardment and some light skirmishing, but neither side made any attacks. It was foggy for the entirety of the day, but the fog significantly worsened in the second period, which - when combined with the dimming sunlight and the lingering powder smoke - severely impacted visibility for both sides. The Battle of Karotaga was the largest pitched battle fought in foggy conditions in history.

The Battle of Karotaga is often considered to be the last "proper" battle of the Civil War - that is, a pitched battle where both sides consisted entirely of ordinary mortal soldiers, and where there was little use of magic. In each major engagement which followed Karotaga, the Republican force invariably contained a progressively larger amount of Dreadfolk and/or demonically mutated soldiers, primarily as a response to their defeat and the surrender of General Padina and his army.

General Padina and his soldiers were treated well upon their surrender, mostly due to the fact that Field Marshal Varega admired General Padina's skill and he appreciated that Padina warned him that his defeat was going to lead to the Republicans ousting the moderates and seeking full support from the Dread.

## Army Composition

The Republicans under General Padina outnumbered the Loyalists under F.M. (Field Marshal) Varega in every aspect except artillery. The Republicans fielded 80,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, substantially more than the Loyalist count of 48,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry, but they only had 190 guns compared to the 300 guns the Loyalists fielded. The Republican guns were also generally smaller in calibre; the vast majority of them were six-pounders, whereas the Loyalists mostly fielded eight-pounders and a few twelve-pounders. However, these lighter guns, although less powerful and with a shorter effective range, were more manoeuvrable, particularly in the wooded environment of the battlefield. Both armies solely fielded traditional field guns and not any specialised variants of artillery (howitzers, mortars, etc).

Both the Republican and Loyalist sides had infantry of approximately equal quality; both had several distinguished veteran regiments amongst them, but most were fairly green troops, and many regiments on both sides had never taken part in a battle before. The commanders of both forces were aware of the mixed quality of their infantry, and resolved to keep their orders simple and their advances careful.

Though the Republican cavalry was nearly twice as numerous as that of the Loyalists, it was of significantly lower quality; most of the Republican cavalrymen, albeit highly enthusiastic, had little to no battlefield experience. They also had nothing in the way of heavy cavalry; approximately half their cavalry was hussars and the other half were light dragoons, whose mounted gunnery proved to be notoriously poor. The Loyalist cavalry, on the other hand, was experienced, well-trained and well-equipped. Of the 6000 standard cavalry under F.M. Varega, approximately 2000 were hussars, 3000 were heavy dragoons and 1000 were cuirassiers.

By far the most dangerous force on the Loyalist side, though, was the 2000 Imperial Knights, each mounted atop a fearsome and savage Ragehoof, with somewhere in the region of 20 to 40 battle-mages riding alongside them to cast shields for protection. These Knights had spent virtually their entire adult life training for war and were clad in full Elavitan plate armour, carrying lances, revolving pistols and sabres or maces. Most of them also carried additional melee weapons strapped to their mounts should they need to fight on foot, usually either a longsword or pollaxe. In his memoirs, General Padina wrote that the Imperial Knights were his single greatest fear at Karotaga: "They numbered merely two thousand, but one single Knight has the effect of twenty men. I fully believe that gaggle of demon horses could have routed my entire army on its own - and it nearly did."

## Prelude

   Prior to the battle, General Padina had been trailing the Loyalist forces of F.M. Varega and General Jakazri across Asmukhar. These armies had been raised in Nesaria and were marching to join the war in Avamorica, which at the time was experiencing some of the heaviest fighting on the continent. Padina had been ordered to halt the arrival of the twin armies, or at least to damage them so badly that by the time they did arrive in Avamorica their impact would be negligible.

For a reason which is still largely unknown, by the time the Republican scouts sighted the Loyalist force, the armies of Varega and Jakazri had become separated, and Jakazri's force was nearly a day's march behind Varega's. General Padina set about trying to lengthen this split as much as he could, feeding false information to Jakazri's army and creating physical diversions wherever possible. By the time the battle began, Jakazri was well over a day's march behind.

General Padina was then presented with two options of which force he could fight with a clear time limit of a day in which to destroy it. He decided to strike the much larger force under F.M. Varega first, as he wished to maximise his chances by facing this at full strength rather than after taking losses against the smaller force. F.M. Varega had known of the presence of the Republican army for some time, and soon cottoned onto Padina's plan when he sighted them drawing close in full strength. He therefore ordered his army atop the shallow wooded hill of Karotaga, to stand their ground at all costs and await reinforcements from Jakazri. In his memoirs, Varega curses himself for not realising Padina's plan sooner and slowing down to allow Jakazri to catch up, but at the same time he forever remained confident that the battle site he chose was the most favourable one for miles around.

### Terrain

The hill of Karotaga was (and still is) a protrusion approximately twelve metres above the most flat land which surrounds it. Its slopes are shallow on the northern and eastern sides, but sheerer on the western side, and the southern side gives way to vertical cliffs. This was a double-edged sword for the Loyalists standing atop it; it effectively totally prevented encirclement and restricted the angle of attack to just the northern and eastern sides, partially negating the Republican numerical advantage, but it also provided no avenue of retreat, meaning that if the army broke then it would be lost entirely, forced to either surrender or fight to the death. General Padina's advisors warned him that their foes were in an advantageous position and that this was a bad place to attack, but if he wished to destroy Varega's army before reinforcements arrived, he could not dawdle; he had no choice but to attack the hill.

In the short time F.M. Varega had before the Republicans arrived to meet them in combat, he ordered his soldiers to cut down the trees around the base of the hill to eliminate cover for the enemy, but to leave the ones atop the hill standing, to provide cover for the Loyalists. Though they cleared many trees, they simply did not have enough time to remove all of them before the enemy arrived.

## Course of the Battle

### Preparation

#### Padina

The day of the 20th of October was cloudy, foggy and unseasonably chilly around the area of Karotaga, so General Padina delayed his attack until better visiblity was attained - however, he promised himself that regardless of the visibility he would not wait longer than until midday, or else he would run out of time. Ultimately this is what he ended up doing; the cloudy skies rendered the sun too weak to warm up the air enough to clear the fog, and there was no strong wind to blow it away, so the fog was only marginally dissipated when Padina ordered his army to advance at midday - after letting them have lunch.

#### Varega

Whilst waiting for the inevitable attack, F.M. Varega had his soldiers dig trenches and plant stakes made from the trees they had cut down the day before, and they carefully prepared the ground to flatten the areas where Varega planned to use his cavalry and to roughen the areas where he did not. Knowing that visibility would be a problem throughout the day, Varega also set up a system of torches along the defensive line, positioned behind the formations of soldiers so that the light could easily be seen from behind (where Varega stood) but would be obscured from the front (where the enemy was advancing from). The officers were given orders to light the flame in case of dire emergency to let Varega know they were in distress, for it would be difficult to tell the state of the line through the fog, but the light would be easily seen.

Varega made sure to stress that the torches were only to be lit in a *dire* emergency: "Do not light the flame if your regiment comes to blows, or if you are spooked by the numbers of our foe. Our entire army is outnumbered; expect it. The torch is only to be lit if you have no confidence whatsoever that you can hold your position without reinforcements, or if - Heaven forbid - the line has already broken."

F.M. Varega spread his infantry more or less evenly over the line he planned to hold, which had been bolstered with earthworks. The veteran regiments he kept in reserve, as they would be more capable of filling any gaps carved through the greener regiments than the other way around. The artillery were clustered in three distinct batteries, innovatively named the eastern battery, central battery and western battery. The exact proportion of how many guns were in each battery is unknown, but the eastern (right-hand) battery was the largest; that flank had the smoothest and shallowest terrain and the least substantial earthworks, so Varega put more artillery there to ensure the enemy would not have an easy time advancing.

The bulk of Varega's cavalry was kept on his right (the eastern flank), and the mounted Imperial Knights he kept on his left (the western flank). They were split in this way not merely so they could cover one half of the line each, but so there was a substantial distance between the horses of the cavalry and the Ragehoofs of the Knights; the horses became extremely nervous in the presence of the demonic mounts, so it was prudent to keep them far apart.