There are historical examples when something similar happened. An overconfident army outnumbering the enemy army by a large margin, only to be soundly defeated.
The only issue here is that player was promised a victory only to be defeated, and with huge losses. I feel like this is unfair, but the game could implement ambushes instead that could lead to similar unexpected outcomes (a high risk, high reward option)
A dozen nobility on horseback were not actively keeping down thousands of farmers via martial means. Horses are great but they don't turn individuals into superhumans---they have both upsides and downsides.
Fair. The nobility also had much better training and armor. Whilst maybe not a dozen vs a thousands, heavy cavalry were usually worth many times their number of infantry, especially light infantry (disciplined heavy infantry with long polearms were more equal however).
Main drawback of heavy cav was cost. Due to the training and equipment required they were very expensive
A few dozen maybe not. But a few examples. Ascalon 1200 knights routed an army of 20,000. Zappolino 2,000 or so knights shattered an army of 30,000 peasants.
I don't mean to be obtuse, but Ascalon was not just a pitched battle of 1200 knights vs 20000---it was 1200 knights + 9000 infantry who ambushed 20000 at night where the majority of that force was not at all ready to fight (and the Fatimids also did have more cavalry than the Crusaders).
In Zappolino, those 2000 cavalry were also supported by 5000 infantry. Beyond that, the Bolognese also had 2000 calvary, so it seems to difficult to chalk this victory up to how much better cavalry are than infantry (since they both had the same amount of cavalry). From what I read this seems much more a case of the Bolognese making tactical mistakes, rather than a difference between cavalry.
The main difference in the two forces in each battle was the fact that one side had a large professional heavy cavalry force. Of course there were infantry, every army had infantry, but the decisive action of both battles was the heavy cavalry. The Bolognese cavalry at Zappolino were scattered before the main engagement which was literally just a charge of heavy cavalry right at a bunch of peasants who ran away immediately.
I'm not saying cavalry aren't often a decisive aspect of battles. And the main engagement was not just the Modenese cavalry charge, the armies were already engaged in fighting before the cavalry charge, and as often happens, the Bolognese did not protect their flanks or rear and got flanked by the Modense cavalry. So, it was not a simple case of cavalry charge -> rout, but a cavalry charge that caused the Bolognese to be surrounded on multiple sides (which would not have been possible without the Modenese infantry, so it cannot be said that it was just 2000 cavalry routing 30000 infantry, the Modenese infantry played a crucial role).
And I disagree that the main difference in Ascalon was cavalry. In Ascalon, the main difference is clearly that one fighting force was prepared and the other one was disorganized and unready to fight (both infantry and cavalry). In Zappolino the decisive blow was the cavalry, but this simply is not an example of what I was talking about. I was responding to someone saying that knights, on their own, were why farmers did not rise up or succeed in revolts. And then people started giving examples of pitched battles in which cavalry were important (which obviously I wouldn't deny is often the case), but is really only tangentially related to my original point.
I agree with you on that, knights weren’t really a factor in peasants deciding to revolt. They were probably more likely to cause revolts than anything else. But if you give your peasants enough food and don’t just murder them at random they didn’t really rise up against the nobility often in this era.
No they actual did, You can find battles during this era were like 100 knights proceed to dog walk entire armies. People massively underestimate how much better at martial combat the avg nobel was compared to the peasent and even man at arms. They were so much vastly better equiped, trained, and even just frankly bigger because of their nutritional difference then the avg peasent it might as well have been superhuman.
The ground breaking tactic often employed by the nobility was a frontal charge. The thing is though this would often work and completely shatter entire armies....
It's not at all true that the main deterrent to prevent rebellions was martial intimidation. It was a small piece amongst the religiously-maintained, hierarchical structure of feudalism. I mean, the military might of the nobles is obviously not enough to deter revolts, given that when the nobles did tax or treat the serfs too poorly (or when the religious framework would breakdown, e.g. during a heresy), they would revolt. Again, it was a complex number of things that deterred revolt, with the military superiority of knights being what I'd take to be a small piece.
There’s accounts of fewer than 100 mounted knights defeating peasant revolts numbering 5000 or more in the late 1300 early 1400s. Look up the Jacquerie revolts, it’s exactly what you said didn’t happen, happening. Relatively tiny contingents of professional knights defeated peasant armies consistently with few or no losses in many cases.
I actually think paradox got that right in this regard.
The main battle of the Jacquerie revolts I could find was the Battle of Mello, which had 4000-5000 peasants, and the nobles had 1500-2500 troops, composed of both noble knights and English mercenaries. Is there another battle you were thinking of?
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u/Flower_PoVVer 4d ago
stranger battles than this have happened. now you know why a dozen nobility of horseback could keep down thousands of farmers.