Carnage in Bad Nachtschwein

In the largest battle yet in the War of Ober-Schweinsberg Succession, the newly formed Bad Nachtschwein League endured its first test of arms as armies from not one but both Princes of Ober-Schweinsberg marched on Bad Nachtschwein to suppress what they view as an insidious rebellion among the middle class merchants. With the army of Prince Arnold marching from the east and the army of Prince Ansgar marching from the west, Bad Nachtschwein found itself fighting a two-front conflict with its small army operating out of the walled town.

As smoke and mingling of troops increased on the battlefield, several areas devolved into confused mobs, further exacerbated by the fact that most troops on the field either wore the Ober-Schweinsberg army uniform or civilian dress, with the differing allegiances marked mostly by banners or armbands or feathers and cockades in hats. It is impossible to judge how many casualties were a result of friendly fire in the confused circumstances of the battle.

The fighting might have continued unabated except for an unexpected intervention....the Mother Superior and her charges from the nearby Sisters of St. George convent (an unusual convent serving mostly expatriates from the British Isles) marched into the field of battle and apparently upbraided each commander in turn in most heated fashion for the destruction of a stained glass window shattered by the reports from cannon fire and the trampling of one of the outer vegetable gardens of the convent. Mother Superior Agnes Pellingham, decked out in the traditional white habit and carrying the red cross-shaped staff of her office, was seen to give a particularly harsh tongue-lashing to the general of the Bad Nachtschwein for the theft of ripe grapes from the convent's vineyards by one of his regiments. Locally, the sisters are known as the Drachenonnen or "Dragon Nuns", a reference most believe to be half to the legend of St. George and the Dragon and half to the disposition of the Mother Superior.

After all sides called a parlay, presided over by the Mother Superior, the wounded of all sides were taken to the hospital of the convent and cared for by the Sisters while the armies of the two Princes retired to their respective encampments and all sides began reorganizing their tangled forces. Even at this late hour, stragglers are still stumbling into the various encampments, and sometimes hurrying right back out again to find the right one.