It took King Ine's army another day to sort itself out and set up their camp beyond our crossbow range. I didn't want to reveal it if I didn't have to, but our cannons would fire out to one thousand yards and still do damage.
We had also prepared the field in front of the Keep's western wall facing Wessex. It had holes about a foot in diameter and three feet deep, covered with cloth and a light coating of dirt. The leg-breakers and caltrops were strewn across the field.
These two devices would stop the Wessex troop's first attempt at our walls. They would be cautious after that, slowing down, acting as targets for our crossbowmen a little longer.
On the fourth day, the Wessex troops lined up for battle. It took them hours to line up in position. This was good for us. The troops were getting tired standing around waiting for the formations to come together.
In the meantime, my people were lounging about and having a hot meal.
When the Saxons were in formation, a man on horseback gave a speech to each of the five blocks of troops. I think it was the same speech repeated. I will have to ask prisoners after the battle.
He then had a rider with a white flag ride out.
King Ine's challenge for individual battle was passed to me. I thought he was nuts but asked Barons Lewanniet and Bolventor what that was all about.
"King Ine is hoping you will accept and come out yourself. He can have his champion represent him in a winner-take-all-all battle. "
If I had my M1911A1 Colt .45 automatic, I would have considered it. But I wasn't a notorious swordsman, so I passed.
I wish my wife would stop baring her buttocks at the enemy. The soldiers loved it, they cheered her. Why they loved it was the question.
Four hours later, they finally began to move forward in rows. King Ine wasn't completely incompetent.
The first row had shields in front of them, forming a shield wall. The next two rows were carrying their shields over their heads. Together the shields would prevent our crossbows from doing a lot of damage.
Sheltered by the shield wall were troops carrying ladders. Their intention was obvious, get the laddermen safely to the wall, then overwhelm us.
Whoever devised that plan relied on us following the normal Keep wall construction scheme with fifteen feet tall walls. Ours were twenty-five feet. When you only have to pour concrete, you can do much more than having to haul stone into place.
The advance went just like I thought it would. The Saxon soldiers were safe under their shields as long as they held them in place. But the leg-breakers and caltrops ruined that plan.
As the soldiers stepped on the obstacles, they would go down dropping their shields. When the shields were down, the rain of bolts was deadly.
The Saxons kept advancing even through the heavy losses. They reached the walls, and laid the ladders against them. Realizing they couldn't get to the top, some soldiers started to turn back, others joined them. Soon it was a rout.
Several hundred Saxons remained on the field, dead or wounded. After a time, an officer with a white flag rode out from the Saxon lines.
King Ine was asking for a truce to remove their dead and wounded. We gave them two hours to accomplish the task. I didn't want the dead decaying on the field and being a host to disease, and the wounded would be another strain on their resources. It was almost dark before they finished. It took almost three hours, but I didn't disturb them.
That ended the battle for the day. I became concerned my troops were being light-hearted about the whole thing. If they thought it would continue to be this easy, they had another guess coming.
I went from campfire to campfire, checking on the troops, trying to calm them down. I told them the story of the Army Captain who ordered his servant to lay out a red shirt to wear into battle.
His soldier asked him why it was always a red shirt.
"If I'm wounded, I don't want you soldiers to be disheartened."
The morning of the battle, they saw how outnumbered they were. The same soldier asked if the Captain was going to wear his red shirt.
"No, I will wear my brown pants."
The soldiers all loved it. It was the macabre humor soldiers used before a battle.
At daylight the next morning, small flags marked all the leg-breaking holes. They also picked up all the caltrops they could find. King Ine’s men had used their access to the battlefield well.
The Saxon troops were once again lined up waiting for the King's speech. If I were one of his soldiers, I would consider killing him.
Like clockwork, the battle started like yesterday's fight. The shield wall was the same. Only this time it didn't fall apart as the soldiers avoided the leg-breakers. New ladders that would reach the top of our wall had been made overnight.
They had some losses due to shields wavering, but nothing like the last time. When they reached the wall, the ladders were placed, and they were indeed tall enough. We pushed most of them off with long poles that had a fork at the end to use against the ladders.
They kept coming. We had vats of boiling oil to dump on them, and they still kept coming. Some reached the top of the wall only to be cut down. And still they kept coming.
I told my signalman to blow his horn. Bringing our fresh troops forward and letting those who had been fighting to have a rest. As men were replaced, some were found to be wounded.
In the heat of battle, a man may not know he has been injured and will keep fighting until shock sets in. We had fifteen men killed so far.
The Saxon forces were tiring. They were coming up the ladders slower, making them better targets.
Finally, they stopped. Their leaders signaled them to retreat accepting they wouldn't make it over the wall.
We had twenty-seven dead and fifty-two wounded.
The Saxons left about two hundred and fifty men at the base of our walls. This wasn't good. Their army was larger than ours and could absorb the losses better.
Lady Agnes had a MASH unit working throughout the night to save the wounded. It reminded me that I had to 'invent' penicillin.
The next day King Ine changed his tactics. His troops, who had stayed on the western side of our Keep, now surrounded it. He would starve us out. Or so he thought.
We had enough food for everyone for a year. And there was enough open space in the Keep's fields to plant crops. Four wells secured our water supply. All part of our contingency planning.
We were also recruiting more soldiers in Armorica, and sent negotiators to the Welsh. We paid a large amount of silver to one of their leaders to raid Wessex once their armies were engaged with us.
I hoped he would and not just take the money and leave the Saxons alone. I didn't think he would pass on such a tempting target.
We had a continuous watch on the Saxon troops with telescopes. A month later, we saw signs of sickness in the Wessex ranks. They were losing dozens of men a day on top of the desertions they were having.
King Ine would have to do something soon or lose his army.
They started moving mangonels to fire at our walls. Unlike the catapults, they operated on manpower-pulled cords attached to a lever to launch projectiles. While needing more men to operate, they fired larger missiles more frequently. Or smaller missiles further.
As expected, they used different-sized stones to find the range of the walls. Once they found the largest stone that would reach the wall, they quit for the day. They would have men out collecting stones of that size. His mangonels were so accurate they hit the wall every time.
It worked well against a stone block wall, breaking and moving the individual stones that made up the wall. But all they could do to our reinforced concrete was chip away at it. It would take a year or more to break the wall's surface.
Plus, the earthen rubble behind the wall would be acting as a shock absorber. His army would dissolve before it got through.
They would have been better off firing over the wall and damaging our internal infrastructure.
Another two months passed, and Ine was losing more troops every day. We estimated he was down to three thousand men out of the five thousand he started with.
One morning, his troops began pulling down their tents and moving out. Two days later, there wasn't a Saxon in sight. The King must have figured out he wouldn't be taking our Keep.
We had been doing after-action sessions on every type of attack they made. We decided our biggest mistake was not having our own mangonels. It would have moved things a lot faster if we had taken theirs out of action.
Our scouts found they had left their machines. So we moved them inside to use the next time we were attacked. The other Border Keeps would be getting them as well, including the Keeps facing the Welsh.
We found out later the Welsh Baron had taken my silver and did nothing.
The scouts advanced as far as Hayle, Zennor, and Rame. They found the Keeps Geraint had lost sitting empty.
We dialed back the number of troops at each of our Keeps facing the border. I didn't think we had enough troops to man the three Keeps the Saxons had left empty. Some of the people wanted to go back to their old farms, but I told them I couldn't defend them yet.
Yes, we had stood off King Ine, but in a well-defended Keep. In open battle, he would tear us up. I would need to have field artillery and muskets before I would try those odds.
King Ine made very few mistakes in his attempt to conquer the Keep. Most of those were due to ignorance, not stupidity. He was a pretty good tactician.
A month after the Saxons left, five hundred troops we recruited from Armorica landed in Tintagel. We spread them throughout all the Keeps in Cornwall so they wouldn't get into mischief.
So, my goal to fend off King Ine without having a major war was successful.