The First Italian War began when Milan blockaded multiple Sicilian ports in an attempt to reduce the wealth of the rapidly growing Italian state. King Roger raised armies quickly and ventured north towards Florence, but met with considerable resistance. When the city finally fell, Roger had to hold his troops back in the city to recover, as well as hold Florence from any counterattacks from the numerically superior Milanese forces coming down from the capital.
Newly adopted general Tizrano di Calpizato got the call to go forth and continue the offensive, but he was turned back by the superior forces at Milan itself and was forced to retreat. His battered and bloodied army barely made it to the Po River when Milan's general Catalano Rossi caught up to him. This battle was a great opportunity for Milan; wiping out Calpizato's army would mean both of Sicily's offenses had been turned back, and they could begin retaking their holdings in Italy.
General Calpizato surveyed his forces. Two groups of sergeant spearmen, four divisions of Muslim archers, a hastily-mustered regiment of militia crossbowmen, his personal bodyguard, and the leftover artillery from the failed siege of Milan, three trebuchets and two mangonels. His spies reported that Rossi's army held some 2500 men, far more than roughly 600 fighting men Calpizato had. Arguably worse than that, Rossi's army was made up primarily of swordsman and spearmen, which would assault the weakness of his own army, melee shock power.
Under normal circumstances, this battle would have been unwinnable. However, Calpizato knew the terrain well, and picked the one place he felt he could defend his frail troops and equipment; the bridge over the Po river. He set his archers and crossbowmen on either side of the bridge, with the spearmen clustered at the end to hold the line and present a wall of spearpoints to any attackers. Behind this front stood the siege weapons, and Calpizato himself rode back and forth behind his men, rallying them with a tremendous and fiery speech.
Rossi aligned the Milanese forces in a simple column, and charged across the bridge, counting on sheer weight of numbers to win the day. A sound strategy, if a potentially costly one. Rossi, however, underestimated Sicilian ingenuity.
King Roger had made it a priority to build as many siege workshops as possible, and promoted the pursuit of technological superiority. Nowhere was this better reflected than the mangonel, a wooden device designed to launch fire pots, vessels designed to create a fireball on impact. Calpizato was trained extensively in their use both as an offensive weapon and a defensive weapon, and the two he brought with him to the Po river would serve him well on this day.
As the Milanese troops marched across the bridge, they were beset with arrows, crossbow bolts, rocks fired from the trebuchets, and explosive barrels of combustible fire pots. By the time the first ranks reached the spearmen, their morale and ranks both were shattered, and they were easily turned back by the spears. Calpizato urged his men on, constantly instructing the archers and mangonels to adjust their firing arcs, watching from the top of a nearby hill to better see the layout of the battle.
Sheer numbers began to take their toll. The first few ranks of the spearmen succumbed, and the Milanese forces were getting inside the trebuchets' firing arc. Milan had also led with their spearmen, leaving their more powerful shock troops to battle the increasingly exhausted Sicilian spearmen. Calpizato weighed his options, and knew he had no choice.
Calpizato led a charge into the front of the Milanese forces, battering through his own spearmen in a spirited and gutsy strike. Seeing their own general's bravery in the face of utter defeat rejuvenated the Sicilian forces, and they began to fight with a righteous fervor. The advance of the Milanese troops stopped, and for a time they were pushed backwards.
Cavalry cannot stand up to a protracted melee, however, and Calpizato's bodyguard was being cut down around him. One full group of spearmen lay dead, and the other fought at less than 50% strength. The Milanese army was decimated, yet they still fought on. Rossi knew that if they could just break through this final line, they could wipe out the rest of Calpizato's forces and turn the tide of the war.
As the last of the spearmen fell, one group of Muslim archers threw down their bows, drew their short swords, and bravely charged into battle. Their light padded armor could not stand up to the swords of the Milanese troops, and they knew this charge would be to their deaths, yet still they rushed forward to protect Calpizato and the artillery, hoping that if their deaths could buy another minute, maybe two, perhaps the battle could still be won.
Their sacrifice would not be in vain. A barrel from the mangonel landed in the midst of the Milanese forces, incinerating nearly a hundred men in a single shot, among them General Catalano Rossi. The blow to morale was the final straw, and the Milanese army broke, retreating from the battle, with some of the few remaining falling to arrows that fell down into their exposed flanks.
When the dust settled, the Milanese army was thoroughly devastated. Over 2000 men fell during the battle, their bodies piled high on the bridge. The Sicilian army was also ravaged, having lost both ranks of spearmen, most of the brave archers who charged forth to hold the line, and every member of Calpizato's bodyguard save the general himself. Battle estimates credit the mangonels with almost 50% of the Milanese casualties.
The defeat at the Po river, along with the fall of the islands Corsica and Sardinia, led Milan to beg for peace one year after this battle. King Roger accepted with little hesitation, and later ordered forts be built at each river crossing so Calpizato's strategy could be used in standard defenses.
Calpizato returned to Naples for a medal ceremony, and later led another regiment during the Second Italian War against Venice, where he fell honorably in battle outside of Zagreb in eastern Europe.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
And now, some rambling.
I don't mind admitting to a bit of a journalistic man-crush on Jeff Green. I'm a dork, I know that, and I have no trouble with that fact. I had a subscription to Computer Gaming World and Games For Windows for about five years, coming over from PC Gamer. I thought CGW had the best features in Tom Vs. Bruce and Scorched Earth, later Greenspeak, and the best editors in Jeff Green, Darren Gladstone, Sean Molloy, Shawn Elliott, and Ryan Scott. Not long after the GFW transition I discovered GFW Radio, the weekly podcast, and I listened to it weekly.
I remember firing an email off to my then-girlfriend, now-wife when they announced that the magazine was closing. I was heartbroken. Honestly -- I looked forward to getting GFW in the mail each month, and I read it cover to cover. After listening to the podcast for so long, I was to the point where I could recognize each writer's style without hitting the byline (except for Ryan, since his reviews were more than 45 minutes of silence and two "What the hell?" sentences). Losing that magazine, that actual physical product, was very depressing. I was not surprised to see Jeff leave for EA, Shawn for 2K Boston, and Sean for Blizzard very quickly. 1up's great purge got rid of Ryan, thus completing the removal of all five editors, with Darren having left some months prior.
I'm listening to the old GFW Radios and reading the old magazines lately, and there's a bittersweet quality to it. It's as great as it ever was, but it's looking back at a time that won't exist again. But that's not so much about GFW as it is about me.
The year that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out, I got one of the first-run printings, with the gold cartridge and the t-shirt and everything. But it was a Christmas present, and the game came out in September, so I couldn't play it until Christmas. In my family, we opened our presents on Christmas morning, but we could do two on Christmas Eve. My mother knew which present I wanted to get that night, as I'd been going nuts about it for weeks, so she wrapped everything in those shirt-size boxes and padded them with tissue paper. I selected my first present and got a sweater, I think, I can't recall, it wasn't important. Now that I had a box, the experiment could begin. I went back into my room and got WCW/NWO World Tour out of my N64, grabbed the game box for it, and came back into the living room. I put it in the shirt box, packed tissue paper around it, and began a careful process of lifting my presents, judging weight, listening for the sound shaking it made, gauging the differences when they were moved, and so on. This took about ten minutes before I was satisfied with my decision, and I opened the present to find Ocarina of Time. My mother thought I was nuts. I played the game until three in the morning.
In 1997, the summer after my freshman year, I spent the night at a friend's house, though that would have implied sleep at some point. Instead, Joey and I played his brand new PC game for about 40 straight hours, Heroes of Might and Magic III. He played as the Order, or whoever it was that had the naga and the genies and the titans, with Fafnir as his hero. I was Sandro of the necromancers. I went out and bought it the next day, and played it more than any other turn-based strategy game I've ever had. Later, in the same game, my neighbor and I sat down with pencil, paper, calculator, and pause button to thoroughly analyze Ruby Weapon and how to beat it, in the days before GameFAQs.
After I got Final Fantasy VII, I played it obsessively, including the first week without saving because I didn't have a memory card or access to a car for that week in the summer. Staunton didn't have any video game stores, and I'd have to wait for the weekend to go to Harrisonburg. I played all the way through Midgar with no way to save, knowing that any game over would be the end of DAYS of work. The battle with Rufus at the top of the Shin-Ra building was the most stressful battle in a game I think I've ever had.
In my senior year of high school, I played a six-man game of Heroes of Might and Magic II in the physics room during lunch for three months. I played as the necromancers, and would chase people around the map with my 1500-skeleton, 65-bone dragon army chanting "Bonedragonbonedragonbonedragon" in a low voice. Billy and I would trash talk each other all day, leading up to our actual matches.
The first time I played through Planescape: Torment, I got to the Sensate HQ and went up to the spheres, where you find out how one of the Nameless One's incarnations -really- felt about Deionarra. I was staring at a 13-inch screen reading words scrolling by, gripped tighter than any movie ever had me.
In northern Virginia, my roommate Nute and I would play through multiple seasons of Madden 2003 in a single sitting, choosing two divisional opponents, playing each other twice, and simming the rest of the games. I beat him more often than not through judicious use of the quick slant right into his free safety, or "hospital ball." This would take ten hours.
After moving to Kansas City, I spent most every Sunday playing Starcraft with Nathan, starting at 10 AM and stopping sometime after 10 PM. We even set up a test one day to see what would win, 200 psi of Zerglings or Zealots. We grabbed the BGH map, built up our bases with multiple hatcheries/nexuses (nexii?), and let it run for thirty minutes while we played Soul Calibur, then spent 45 minutes carefully arranging them to attack. Then we ran THE SAME TEST with them fully upgraded. Zerglings won each time.
Somewhere along the way, though, I lost something. I don't know if it came out of my interest in the industry, reading all the behind-the-scenes info and learning more about the process. I don't know if I just became more critical as I got older. I don't know if I subconsciously have started to want more "mature" things as I've gotten older, but I doubt that one. I don't know if it's me or if it's the games, but I don't enjoy it like I used to.
I find more things that break World of Warcraft for me, the homogenizing of the classes, the removal of the fun flavor of the professions, the things that don't make it so perfectly balanced all the time. I hardly noticed the lore in the Storm Peaks, which is absolutely not how I want to play the game -- I'd been saving that zone for last on purpose. I'm one of those nerds griping about the portrayal of Illidan, Kael'thas, and Arthas.
I've gotten more games that have fallen flat for me in the last year than I think I ever have before. Lost Odyssey, Persona 4, Empire: Total War, NFL Head Coach 2009, Madden 2009, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Warhammer 40K: Soulstorm... I have Universe At War, Bioshock, Final Fantasy IV, Daxter, and Dominions 3 that I've never played. Somewhere along the way I lost that silly, stupid joy that I used to have, that let me play the same game for hours and hours and hours. Every now and then I find a gem that rekindles it briefly, like The World Ends With You or Valkyria Chronicles, but it's fleeting, and then I'm back to being stuck, drifting from game to game, trying to recapture the feelings of my youth.
Listening to the old podcasts, reading the old magazines, they remind me of when I approached this hobby with that same passion, that same zeal. Now I know that I won't read another new GFW, or experience another new podcast with Jeff, Sean, Shawn, and Ryan. And I wonder if I'm going to get that same feeling back with gaming, or have I somehow ruined it for myself by breaking down the wall separating developer and gamer.
I remember firing an email off to my then-girlfriend, now-wife when they announced that the magazine was closing. I was heartbroken. Honestly -- I looked forward to getting GFW in the mail each month, and I read it cover to cover. After listening to the podcast for so long, I was to the point where I could recognize each writer's style without hitting the byline (except for Ryan, since his reviews were more than 45 minutes of silence and two "What the hell?" sentences). Losing that magazine, that actual physical product, was very depressing. I was not surprised to see Jeff leave for EA, Shawn for 2K Boston, and Sean for Blizzard very quickly. 1up's great purge got rid of Ryan, thus completing the removal of all five editors, with Darren having left some months prior.
I'm listening to the old GFW Radios and reading the old magazines lately, and there's a bittersweet quality to it. It's as great as it ever was, but it's looking back at a time that won't exist again. But that's not so much about GFW as it is about me.
The year that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out, I got one of the first-run printings, with the gold cartridge and the t-shirt and everything. But it was a Christmas present, and the game came out in September, so I couldn't play it until Christmas. In my family, we opened our presents on Christmas morning, but we could do two on Christmas Eve. My mother knew which present I wanted to get that night, as I'd been going nuts about it for weeks, so she wrapped everything in those shirt-size boxes and padded them with tissue paper. I selected my first present and got a sweater, I think, I can't recall, it wasn't important. Now that I had a box, the experiment could begin. I went back into my room and got WCW/NWO World Tour out of my N64, grabbed the game box for it, and came back into the living room. I put it in the shirt box, packed tissue paper around it, and began a careful process of lifting my presents, judging weight, listening for the sound shaking it made, gauging the differences when they were moved, and so on. This took about ten minutes before I was satisfied with my decision, and I opened the present to find Ocarina of Time. My mother thought I was nuts. I played the game until three in the morning.
In 1997, the summer after my freshman year, I spent the night at a friend's house, though that would have implied sleep at some point. Instead, Joey and I played his brand new PC game for about 40 straight hours, Heroes of Might and Magic III. He played as the Order, or whoever it was that had the naga and the genies and the titans, with Fafnir as his hero. I was Sandro of the necromancers. I went out and bought it the next day, and played it more than any other turn-based strategy game I've ever had. Later, in the same game, my neighbor and I sat down with pencil, paper, calculator, and pause button to thoroughly analyze Ruby Weapon and how to beat it, in the days before GameFAQs.
After I got Final Fantasy VII, I played it obsessively, including the first week without saving because I didn't have a memory card or access to a car for that week in the summer. Staunton didn't have any video game stores, and I'd have to wait for the weekend to go to Harrisonburg. I played all the way through Midgar with no way to save, knowing that any game over would be the end of DAYS of work. The battle with Rufus at the top of the Shin-Ra building was the most stressful battle in a game I think I've ever had.
In my senior year of high school, I played a six-man game of Heroes of Might and Magic II in the physics room during lunch for three months. I played as the necromancers, and would chase people around the map with my 1500-skeleton, 65-bone dragon army chanting "Bonedragonbonedragonbonedragon" in a low voice. Billy and I would trash talk each other all day, leading up to our actual matches.
The first time I played through Planescape: Torment, I got to the Sensate HQ and went up to the spheres, where you find out how one of the Nameless One's incarnations -really- felt about Deionarra. I was staring at a 13-inch screen reading words scrolling by, gripped tighter than any movie ever had me.
In northern Virginia, my roommate Nute and I would play through multiple seasons of Madden 2003 in a single sitting, choosing two divisional opponents, playing each other twice, and simming the rest of the games. I beat him more often than not through judicious use of the quick slant right into his free safety, or "hospital ball." This would take ten hours.
After moving to Kansas City, I spent most every Sunday playing Starcraft with Nathan, starting at 10 AM and stopping sometime after 10 PM. We even set up a test one day to see what would win, 200 psi of Zerglings or Zealots. We grabbed the BGH map, built up our bases with multiple hatcheries/nexuses (nexii?), and let it run for thirty minutes while we played Soul Calibur, then spent 45 minutes carefully arranging them to attack. Then we ran THE SAME TEST with them fully upgraded. Zerglings won each time.
Somewhere along the way, though, I lost something. I don't know if it came out of my interest in the industry, reading all the behind-the-scenes info and learning more about the process. I don't know if I just became more critical as I got older. I don't know if I subconsciously have started to want more "mature" things as I've gotten older, but I doubt that one. I don't know if it's me or if it's the games, but I don't enjoy it like I used to.
I find more things that break World of Warcraft for me, the homogenizing of the classes, the removal of the fun flavor of the professions, the things that don't make it so perfectly balanced all the time. I hardly noticed the lore in the Storm Peaks, which is absolutely not how I want to play the game -- I'd been saving that zone for last on purpose. I'm one of those nerds griping about the portrayal of Illidan, Kael'thas, and Arthas.
I've gotten more games that have fallen flat for me in the last year than I think I ever have before. Lost Odyssey, Persona 4, Empire: Total War, NFL Head Coach 2009, Madden 2009, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Warhammer 40K: Soulstorm... I have Universe At War, Bioshock, Final Fantasy IV, Daxter, and Dominions 3 that I've never played. Somewhere along the way I lost that silly, stupid joy that I used to have, that let me play the same game for hours and hours and hours. Every now and then I find a gem that rekindles it briefly, like The World Ends With You or Valkyria Chronicles, but it's fleeting, and then I'm back to being stuck, drifting from game to game, trying to recapture the feelings of my youth.
Listening to the old podcasts, reading the old magazines, they remind me of when I approached this hobby with that same passion, that same zeal. Now I know that I won't read another new GFW, or experience another new podcast with Jeff, Sean, Shawn, and Ryan. And I wonder if I'm going to get that same feeling back with gaming, or have I somehow ruined it for myself by breaking down the wall separating developer and gamer.
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