Not exactly a death, per se, but it created a very serious crisis for the fledgling United States. I was playing the Road to Independance campaign, Episode three. You start with George Washington, four provinical cavalry, six minutemen militia, one dragoon, a normal cannon and a howitzer.
The British starts with... All the east coast except Boston. Massive armies. MASSIVE. I left the minutemen in boston, except for four, built a good sized army, left the howitzers with Boston, then attacked Philadelphia, because the British strengthened New York (I was right outside it) and left Philadelphia, a much larger city, undefended.
I take Philadelphia with... Acceptable losses.
The British attack Boston and it's woefully inadequate defenses with two full stack armies. I set up my defense outside the 'city' buildings, with my firing lines set up behind 'bunkers' so my men have cover. My firing lines are positioned so that the enemy has to funnel through the thoroughfares of the city, bottlenecking and choking the superior numbers of the enemy. My flank is protected with the only two line infantry I have, and some of the firelock citizenry. I will never consider firelock citizenry cannon fodder EVER AGAIN.
The enemy forces mostly bypassed the city, except for a few milita units that my minutemen thrashed pretty easily. The enemy first attacked with a couple of their numerous cavalry units. My line infantry became embroiled in hand to hand combat, so I affixed plug bayonets, meaning the line infantry couldn't shoot for the rest of the engagement. While the cavarly swarmed over my valiant line infantry, I repositioned my minutemen behind the line infantry, and put them on fire at will
Typically, this is a good way to kill many of your men with friendly fire. Thankfully, my men were outnumbered about five to one by cavalry, so I didn't kill very many of them. The citizenry to the side of the line infantry were busy shooting it out with two units of line infantry, and winning, because Bostonians are fucking beastly or something. I flank/surrounded the offending line infantry with my two cavalry, and routed them pretty easily. More militia attacked my cavalry, so I sent the firelock citizens into hand to hand against the enemy.
At this point, the tactical situation devolved into utter insanity, my lines basically collapsed into a swirling melee, and the only units I really could do anything with were my left flank minutemen, who had finished thrashing the aforementioned militia by now, my general, and my singular howitzer unit. I ordered the howitzer to fire on the enemy cavalry that remained, not that they did any good, and rolled my minutemen into the left flank of the melee to support the lines. They broke the lines, and continued rolling up the enemy quite satisfactorily.
My general I sent to support the right flank cavalry. He had the misfortune of arriving a bit too late, as most of the units broke. He also had the misfortune of facing Tribal Cavalry Auxiliary. Which can fire from their horses. Which is bullshit. I digress. The remained cavalry unit I had over there stood their ground for a moment while the general 'fled'. Once they were defeated, the Tribals pursued my general, and decimated his unit, but miraculously didn't manage to kill him. My minutemen rolled up to them by that point, and the tribals were killed.
The rest was basically a mop up of scattered resistance. The end result of the battle was a close victory against a numerically superior foe. My units were... Quite beaten up. I had perhaps two units that were only twenty men short of a full unit, and most of the others were down to numbers I can count on my hands. My general had six men left, plus himself. I had about thirty cavalry left, maybe three hundred infantry of disparate units.
Moreover, the enemy has another full stack army camped out on the other side of Maine. This is going to be an interesting war...
Empire Total War.