Princess Celestia The Changeling Queen: Stories Behind the Mask

by vren55

The History of Equestria Under Alternia Part 15 (589 AR): The Battle of Bracken Bay Part 1, Ch. 12 of the Saddle Arabian War Arc

The Saddle Arabian army had retrieved the initiative and the Equestrians weren’t even aware of it. Under the command of Brigadier General Ginger, 14,000 horses of the Saddle Arabian Desert Rats were marching toward the port of Bracken Bay, aiming to seize the port and cut the army’s supply lines.

General Mountague, who had been summoned by courier, was fast behind with his remaining 11,500 soldiers. Within days after the Equestrian victory in the Bay of Solent, the two Saddle Arabians had met up and had combined their forces for a total of 25,500 horses, and 16 cannon. Mountague, although able to fight, conceded that Ginger was the superior tactician (especially given the dire circumstances) and the pair continued onward, ensuring to dodge Equestrian patrols.

The Saddle Arabian Desert Rats - Brigadier General Ginger, 14,000

• 1st division: 3,000
• 2nd division: 3,000
• 3rd division: 3,000
• The Silver Janissaries (Elite division): 3,000
• 4th division (reserves): 2,000

The Hammer of Saddle Arabia: 11,500 General Mountague

• 2nd Division, 4000 horses
• 3rd Division, 5500 horses
• Reserves: 2000

The fact was, the Equestrian army 4th and 5th divisions under General Aetheflaed and Argent Defender had lost track of the Equestrian 3rd division under Woodstock, and had not expected that the Saddle Arabian army would bypass them in favor of heading for their supply lines. After all, it stood to reason that even if the Saddle Arabians consolidated, they would use their numbers to destroy the attacking Equestrian forces.

But Ginger wanted to go for a long term strategic play. She didn’t just want to defeat the Equestrians, she wanted to force Celestia to sue for peace. What better way than holding hostage the Equestrian 1st Army?

Mountague agreed and as such, the pair’s combined forces were heading right towards Bracken Bay and one of the most important battles of the Saddle Arabian War.

Of course, Princess Blueblood hadn’t left the port entirely undefended. She was headquartered there after all, and to protect the port and the Equestrian 1st Army Headquarters, she had assigned the army’s 1st Division, numbering 6000 with 7 cannon, to guard the city of Bracken Bay. Furthermore, the 1st Division of the Equestrian 1st Army was arguably the best in the entire army, with a brigade of Royal Guard, Manehattan Rangers, and Las Pegasus Hussars. The final division, that of the Equestrian Foreign Legion, was untested, had no history, and made up of Saddle Arabian defectors and a disparate amount of volunteers and enlisted from other species, but it was well-equipped and eager for battle.

Supreme Commander of the Equestrian 1st Army: Princess Blueblood
1st Division - Brigadier General - Archmage Elderberry Twist, 6000 ponies
Chief of Staff of 1st Division: Colonel Eumenes

• 1st Royal Guard: 1500 ponies, unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies, “Captain” Magnolia
• Manehattan Rangers: 1500 ponies, earth ponies, Colonel Pumpkin Squash
• Las Pegassus Hussars: 1000 ponies, pegasi, Colonel Sobieski

• Equestrian Foreign Legion: 2000 ponies, 7 6-pounder cannon, Colonel Mustang

  • 1st Regiment: 800 Lt. Colonel Hawkeye
  • 2nd Regiment: 700 Major Edward
  • 3rd Regiment (Artillery): 500 Major Hoofstrong

The battle began a little more than a month after the Battle of the Bay of Solent. At this point, the Equestrians were getting very nervous. They had somehow lost the Saddle Arabian army, and an entire division of ponies was missin. Princess Blueblood was furious and frightened. She knew the Saddle Arabians were planning something, but she had no idea what.

Her trusted subordinate, Brigadier General Elderberry Twist, an Equestrian Archmage, was well aware of the importance of her position, and of the dire situation. So she had posted scouts and pickets on all the land approaches to Bracken Bay, manned by the super-sized Equestrian Foreign Legion (it was twice the size of most Equestrian brigades). They were to respond first in the event of a contact.

It was a picket of a squad of Saddle Arabians on the steep Marye’s Heights outside of Bracken Bay, who first spotted the dust cloud approaching mid-morning, shortly before 11am. It was the vanguard of the Saddle Arabian force, the Saddle Arabian Desert Rat’s 1st Division, in column formation. Immediately, the squad leader, a Sergeant Fury, sent a dispatch to brigade command and called for reinforcements. He also sounded the alarm and made a smoke signal to alert the nearby pickets. Lieutenant Breda responded with his company, which was soon followed by Lieutenant Falman and his company. These two hundred horses immediately spread out, setting up their crossbows on the hills, they opened fire. It was at extreme range, so few Saddle Arabians were wounded, but it got the enemy’s attention.

Colonel Lusty of the Saddle Arabian 1st Division reported to Ginger of the contact and ordered her horses to prepare an assault against the Legionnaires. Breda and Falman anticipated this maneuver though, and before Lusty could order the assault, their horses spread out caltrops.

Lusty ordered the 1st Brigade of her 1st Division to obliterate the Legionnaires, while the other 2 brigades push on, but reinforcements were arriving in force.

The commander of the picketing forces, the unicorns Major Edward and his adjutant, Captain Alphonse, had arrived to personally oversee the situation. Edward and his brother instantly realized, from the size of the dust cloud that was following Lusty’s 1st Division, that they were going to be attacked by overwhelming numbers.

Edward had a decision to make. He could retreat, or he could escalate the battle and call for reinforcements. He decided to escalate, as the positions he held on top of the Marye’s Heights were impressive and if he could delay the Saddle Arabians long enough, he could buy the 1st Division time to fortify the port and prepare for a siege. After sending a message to Mustang and his fellow commanders, he helped Falman and Breda to set up some defenses (the two were unicorn mage specialized in earth magic) and with Alphonse’s help, they raised a long earth rampart as high as a horse.

Lusty decided to attack regardless, no matter the fortifications and traps. But as her 1st Brigade struggled up the Heights, they were met with increasingly accurate crossbow fire. To make matters worse, the brigade was fatigued from the long march, and the climb up to the ridge was made at a terribly slow pace.

It enabled Edward and his legionnaires to inflict significant casualties on the attackers before they even reached the earth ramparts, which they found to be a massive force amplifier for the defenders. They tried to go around it, but the flanks were strewn with caltrops and now, the rest of Edward’s regiment, 700 soldiers in total now, had arrived to reinforce their comrades.

Lusty’s brigade broke and ran back down to their comrades. Deciding that her forces needed to rest, Lusty pulled back out of range of the Equestrian crossbows and ordered her horses to rest.

In the meantime, Colonel Mustang, Hawkeye, and their artillery regiment commander, the earth pony Major Hoofstrong, had arrived to examine the situation and found it to be terribly dire. Another Saddle Arabian division of three thousand horses had just arrived at the foot of the heights and they could see what looked like two entire armies worth of dustclouds in the distance. Their only asset was the fact that they occupied a very defensible position, and that the Saddle Arabians were going to be very tired after the march.

Mustang consulted Archmage Elderberry Twist (with the help of Major Edward) using a crystal ball and she ordered him to delay the Saddle Arabians as long as possible. A day if he could manage it. She assigned the Las Pegasus Hussars to support him. He said he would do his best.

The odds were still stacked against Mustang’s favor, with merely 3,000 Equestrians now faced against a combined force of 9,000 Saddle Arabians. Saddle Arabians were also expecting up to 16,500 horses in reinforcements, enough to overwhelm the Equestrians easily.

On the other hoof, the Equestrians occupied good ground and at the moment, the Saddle Arabians were tired from the morning march. So Mustang knew he could hold for a few hours.

Both sides quickly had lunch in their positions, before the Saddle Arabians again initiated the battle at 2pm. The 2nd Division of the Saddle Arabian Desert Rats led the assault this time, with the 3rd Division backing them up and the 1st Division in reserve.

Ginger’s plan was to try to hit the Equestrian Foreign Legion’s left flank, the edge of the wall with her 2nd legion, then use her 3rd and 1st Divisions to then hit the Equestrian Foreign Legion’s right flank. Her goal was to draw as much attention to the legion’s left before then hammering their weakened side.

The Saddle Arabian plan at first, went quite well. The Saddle Arabians charged up the slope, through crossbow fire and spellfire. Major Hawkeye, who commanded the Equestrian Foreign Legion’s right, refused her flank as best as she could (that is lining them up at an angle so to prevent being outflanked). But the numbers of the 3,000 Saddle Arabians fighting the Equestrians - who now had no wall to protect them - were proving too great for her to handle. She was forced to ask Major Edward to send Captain Alphonse with three “mixed companies” of minotaurs, unicorns, pegasi, earth ponies, diamond dogs and donkeys, to assist them. With these reinforcements though, and the continuous cannon fire from Major Hoofstrong’s cannon, Hawkeye was able to hold her ground reasonably well.

Mustang was no fool though, and was anticipating the Saddle Arabians to attack his now weakened left. At 3pm, as the Saddle Arabian 3rd and 1st divisions under Colonel Lusty charged up the slope, they found themselves harassed from the air by the entirety of the Las Pegasus Hussars.

The 1000 strong pegasi brigade led by Las Pegasus native, Colonel Sobieski, would form flying wedges and smash into the flanks, the rear, maybe even the front, before retreating back into the sky. In their gleaming armor, with long red-painted lances, they scared the living daylights out of the Saddle Arabians who were astounded at their speed and maneuverability. The result was that when the Saddle Arabian 3rd division finally made contact with Mustang’s left flank, their formations were a mess, they were tired from defending from constant attack, and they attacked Mustang’s legionnaires with the awareness they might be hit from above.

Still, the fighting was utterly terrible. It was close, hoof to hoof fighting, where a very very thin line of Equestrian Foreign Legionnaires struggled against an overwhelming Saddle Arabian force. But still the Equestrians held, for four long hours.

At 6pm, with darkness approaching, with her divisions utterly exhausted, Ginger pulled them back. Saddle Arabian reinforcements had arrived, but Ginger didn’t want to waste them attacking entrenched Equestrians. There was also the matter that their had been far too many bodies on the ridge, and adding more… wouldn’t have helped and given the Equestrians more artillery fodder to shoot at.

Mustang, seeing his position as entirely untenable given his losses, withdrew to the port of Bracken Bay, where Archmage Elderberry Twist, her chief of staff - Colonel Eumenes- and Princess Blueblood had done their best to reinforce their position.

Total losses for the first day were as follows:

The Equestrian Foreign Legion: 1,000 casualties (about 50% mortal).

The Las Pegasus Hussars: 400 casualties.

The Saddle Arabian 1st Division: 1,200 casualties

The Saddle Arabian 2nd Division: 800 casualties

The Saddle Arabian 3rd Division: 800 casualties

In numbers, it was a pretty significant Equestrian tactical victory, but due to Mustang needing to withdraw in the night of the first day, the Saddle Arabians had won a strategic victory. Still, the Equestrian Foreign Legion’s stand against overwhelming odds would cement their brigade’s reputation as one of Equestria’s most reliable combat brigades, whilst the Las Pegasus Hussars would be forever known as Equestria’s most deadly shock troops.

Author's Note:

FMA Brotherhood fans. If you were wondering if those were references. Yes, they were references.

Comments

[unfortunately yiff]

This story so far has been the most interesting history textbook i have ever read

[ShadowLDrago]

The commander of the picketing forces, the unicorns Major Edward and his adjutant, Captain Alphonse, had arrived to personally oversee the situation. Edward and his brother instantly realized, from the size of the dust cloud that was following Lusty’s 1st Division, that they were going to be attacked by overwhelming numbers.

That one was on purpose!

After sending a message to Mustang and his fellow commanders, he helped Falman and Breda to set up some defenses (the two were unicorn mage specialized in earth magic) and with Alphonse’s help, they raised a long earth rampart as high as a horse.

Definitely on purpose. I approve.

[RisingComet]

The battle began a little more than a month after the Battle of the Bay of Solent. At this point, the Equestrians were getting very nervous. They had somehow lost the Saddle Arabian army, and an entire division of ponies was missin. Princess Blueblood was furious and frightened. She knew the Saddle Arabians were planning something, but she had no idea what.

"missing" is missing the G

[Jphyper]

So this entire chapter was basically one huge Full Metal Alchemist reference.

Lusty’s brigade broke and ran back down to their comrades. Deciding that her forces needed to rest, Lusty pulled back out of range of Elric’s crossbows and ordered her horses to rest.

You never mentioned Elric; you just said Edward and Alphonse. You made the reference a bit too obvious here.

[vren55]

9441196 Glad you like it. I am a MA in History after all XD. I don't like boring textbooks either.

9441277 Mm hmmm

9441428 Woops :P

9442213 *facedesk* will fix when I have time.

[Just_Me123]

Ahh, caught up at last. Exciting story so far, definitely looking forward to more!

[Edguy0009]

Artillery firing rounds with proximity fuses work wonders against infantry.