The Siege of Zotten was a military engagement between the royal army of the Kingdom of Valens and rebellious militia of the Republic of Ettmark during the Second Ettish War. Clement de Fleur, son of the Onyx King Archebaud de Fleur, sought to open up a route of assault towards Hanset, the provisional capital of the Ettish Republic, and force talks.
Background
In the immediate aftermath of the Onyx King’s War and the subsequent Carettic War, Zotten was effectively a semi-independent polity under nominal control of the Kingdom of Valens. While the queen-regency of Valens had token support from some local nobility, as well as firm control of the nearby Ellet, the Valenic crown was never able to exert enough pressure to get Zotten to explicitly align with them against the growing Ettish rebellion.
Similar to other major cities within Ettmark, Zotten was torn between the pro-Valenic Valkoons, and the pro-independence Schildswarths. With the death of the head of the House Wyltshire, however, the retainer and bailiff Zytwick VanEizenga, himself educated by siege masters in Clarinne, was tasked with defense. For two months, the Castle was able to for the most part keep attacking Valenic forces at bay, forcing them to set up trebuchets on a nearby hill and bombard the Castle from afar. Clement de Fleur sought to secure closer ground and establish decisive control around the city, forcing a surrender.
While the Zotteners and their allies matched the attacking Valenic force in numbers, the Valenic troops were largely professional infantry, accompanied by several contingents of noble cavalry and Galvarais mages. The council in Hanset had already been preparing for imminent evacuation by sea to Laen-on-Fallen, and almost ubiquitously expected VanEizenga and his forces to lose.
The Battle
On 10 Entence 1302, Clement de Fleur summoned his forces on the hills overlooking Zotten, aiming to secure ground closer to the city and begin the second, more intensive phase of sieging. Having recently received information that another 1,800 Ettish troops were on the way to join the defense, he surmised that a decisive defeat of Ettish forces would allow them to mop up any additional troops with ease.
While his initial goal was to starve the Zotteners out, as per the
His forces were surprised to see the De Wyltshire retinue had already left the Castle, alongside most of the forces VanEizenga had surmised. With an ideal position on a downwards charge towards an ill-equipped force, a cavalry charge was ordered with Valenic foot soldiers in tow.
The Zotteners did not only expect this assault, but it was integral to their strategy- knowing that rain collected in the small cirques at the bottom of the hills, the ground was especially marshy in comparison to the surroundings. Valenic heavy cavalry, despite relatively superior training, were slowed to a crawl as Ettish archers and mages began to pelt them from a medium distance. Unable to engage the Ettish spearwalls without sufficient momentum, and with de Fleur in the backline alongside the infantry, a chaotic general retreat saw the majority of Valenic noble-horsemen slaughtered in the fields.
After the death of the bulk of the cavalry, VanEizenga had his remaining mages utilize mass silence tactics to prevent returning fire from Valenic magical contingents, the concentration of which was difficult to break due to a lack of non-magical ranged power on the Valenic end. The few mages that could escape the range of Ettish silence spells were picked off by Ettish crossbowmen, and Ettish forces were able to advance mostly unharried.
With much of their magical power exhausted by the time they reached the top of the hill, VanEizenga ordered a pursuit of the remaining fleeing Valenic forces. While individual contingents were able to put up some level of resistance, they were still under the (largely incorrect) impression that Ettish mages still had large amounts of mana remaining, and much of the Valenic army feared that reorganization would lead to the exhaustion of remaining Ettish power on the largest groups. Most Valenic mages were either dead or fleeing, and magic was largely removed from the equation besides lingering combat blessings during the final stages of fighting.
The morning after on 11 Entence, Artain I of Vymonte would rally the remaining Valenic forces to flee towards Clarinne. He would die of infection en route to the keep.
Aftermath
While the majority of Valenic forces survived the engagement, the scale of the retreat and the massacre of an integral portion of Valens’ noble-cavalry and mages brought into question the competence of the Queen-regency and the de Fleur family as a whole. Mass blessings and conventional magical tactics had to be largely scrapped as evocation magic fell out of favor and the Great Abjuration occured.
Zotten would not fare much better, as the nearby fields were made unsafe by the many deserters who took to banditry in the immediate aftermath of the battle.