A major engagement. A group of 40 goblins arrived and demanded some artifact. The duchess refused.
My own militia consists of 4 squads - spears, crossbows, axes, and swords. Only the spears and crossbows have a full or nearly-full set of iron armor, and I still haven't figured out how to assign ammo, so the crossbowdwarves are just smacking with masterwork wood for now. The other two squads only had weapons, shields, and maybe whatever random gear they could get; they are also completely untrained as I haven't built their barracks yet.
By virtue of however unit decision-making is done in this game, both armies separated into three groups, a front line, a back line, and a flank.
The two front lines clashed, with my speardwarves leading the opening shock. There was a significant amount of strikes on the enemies' hands, arms, etc., resulting in a lot of disarmed foes early on. This proved to be fortuitous, and led to the enemy front collapsing. My back line split in two, one reinforcing the front while the other assisted the flank.
My flank consisted of the militia commander and one his speardwarves. Despite being largely outnumbered, they're both two of the most skilled and best-equipped dwarves in the army and managed to defeat several of their opponents before the back line arrived to relieve them.
First death on my side was another young lady who jumped towards their back line while the front lines where still finishing up. She had her legs broken, dropping her to the ground, an ear cut off, cut repeatedly until all her clothes were gone, and finally took a spear to the brain.
At some point during the battle, one of my four or five necromancer citizens came across the battlefield, got spooked, and reanimated the hand of a long-dead goblin snatcher nowhere near the battlefield. I actually have no idea what happened to that hand either.
Total losses on each side: all of theirs, 5 deaths on mine, plus many wounded. My hospital isn't big enough, and my Chief Medical Dwarf has no skills whatsoever, I only grabbed them because I needed a CMD. Plenty of soap, so I'm not worried about infection.