Realistic representation of morality

It's happened, more or less. See Admiral Yi.

Are you talking about his naval battle? That's in comparable to OP's question. Don't worry, I'll get a beating stick you too.

>Would the 900 run away or fight on?

It all depends on a lot of factors, the most generally being who exactly they're fighting.

But generally, no. If only because of peer pressure from their comrades to go forth.

youtube.com/watch?v=raBNUUj1-fY

Fine. How about Agincourt? 600 vs almost 10,000 dead. That sounds about similar in terms of ratios.

Yes, you do tend to have good casualty ratios when the enemy surrenders and you slaughter all the prisoners.

If you want an actually realistic scenario how about that one guy at Stamford bridge.

Numbers I typically see are 1,500 prisoners. That's still a shitton of dead French in battle.

Circumstances were ideal and pretty reliant on the British troop numbers, you can't just scale it down and have it work the exact same.
I'd look for actual cases of few very people holding off an army for a period. But most of those cases that I've heard of end in their eventual death.

Well, I mean, the scenario in the OP could still end in the eventual death of the 2 combatants.

>peer pressure>survival instinct

a major difference between poorly trained armies and professional soldiers. Stamp out those survival instincts so much that soldiers will march into gunfire.

Well that's how redcoats and such have been portrayed anyway.

It's more a replacement than a removal of survival instinct.
It messes with your fight or flight, the drilling, the drums, the formation.

kek, didn't realize this at first

There was a single French knight who allegedly held 200 Italian soldiers by himself on a bridge according to fairly reliable and detailed sources. I think in the end he either ran away or received reinforcements.

I'm guessing you and your pal killed a bunch of NPC's but instead of fleeing they just killed you two instead. Now you're coming here to get ammunition to throw at your DM.

They were Spanish i think and he just held them back, did not kill 200 of them. Narrow space, Armored experienced elite knight with ballz of steel. If he held back 5-10 each time they tried to push through and his presence had such an effect that they fell back then it could happen.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Terrail,_seigneur_de_Bayard

This happened in real life in France. The squad of French soldiers forced the Italian army into an armstrice.

Bayard was the hero of a celebrated combat of thirteen French knights against an equal number of Spaniards, and his restless energy and valour were conspicuous throughout the Italian wars of this period. At the Battle of Garigliano he single-handedly defended the bridge of the Garigliano against 200 Spaniards, an exploit that brought him such renown that Pope Julius II tried unsuccessfully to entice him into his service.

The French lost despite having a 15th to 20th level Knight in their army. Kicked ass at the bridge though.

I did say he held them back.
But he also had forgotten his armour on that day if I recall well, or maybe it was his helmet. Anyway the dude quite deserve to be the one to grant the king the title of knight (because he also did that)

yeah i know, i was just commenting on the OP and the other comment too. Bayard was like Achilles or something.

seems a bit much

The ones who saw them kill 100 men would want and attempt to flee. The rest will follow and probably get a bit mad at their companions for causing this "for no reason". Officers would be super mad and punish the soldiers, unless they witness what happened.

For heroic defenses there's also the Battle of Cochin:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cochin_(1504)
Where 140 Portuguese held off a force of about 60 000 Malabari for three and a half months without a single Portuguese soldier dying. Malabari dead: 19 000.

Alternatively the battle of Pont-St. Louis, as some others have mentioned in the thread, where 9 Frenchmen held off something like 5000 Italians for a week or so, killing 900 in the process IIRC.

Thing is, in neither of these cases did the enemy morale actually break and rout on a large scale. In attacking a heavily fortified position, you can think of morale as having a tactical and a strategic component. Tactical morale is a per-wave kinda thing, and is only really relevant when men are actually in range of the defenders. You sent in an assault, but too many men died with too little progress and reinforcement? The morale of the remainder of the wave's survivors may break and they may attempt to retreat back to their initial positions. But without threat of counter-attack there's really no reason they would retreat any further. However, continued failure and lack of progress, coupled with poor conditions, may erode the overall "strategic" morale of the army, leading to desertion rather than rout, as well as sapping the initial morale of any given attack wave. The commanders eventually deciding that this is fruitless and trying to circumvent or simply starve out the defenders.

Based Pierre Terrail