Battle of Oxcross

The Battle of Oxcross is a major engagement in the War of the Five Kings. It occurs largely off screen in "Garden of Bones." The army of House Stark in the Riverlands moves into the Westerlands to attack a host of House Lannister reinforcements camped near the town of Oxcross.

Following through on King Robb Stark's promise to give Queen Cersei Lannister "another Whispering Wood", the battle was a decisive Stark victory with the Lannister host under the command of Ser Stafford Lannister decimated and Stafford himself killed.

Prelude
Having won a trio of victories in the Riverlands the army of House Stark under the command of King Robb I is expected to march on the host of Lord Tywin Lannister which has regrouped at Harrenhal. The Lannister force under Ser Jaime Lannister has been decimated and Jaime himself captured. A group of Lannister reinforcements under the command of Ser Stafford Lannister has assembled at Oxcross on the border between the Riverlands and the Westerlands.

Battle
King Robb Stark's forces assault Ser Stafford's camp in a night time raid. Robb's direwolf Grey Wind sneaks up to the Lannister camp, kills several sentries and panics their horses. Robb then leads his cavalry in an attack against the Lannister forces. As the Stark cavalry charges, Lord Greatjon Umber can be heard crying "The King in the North!". The surprised Lannister army is easily slaughtered as they are roused from sleep by the Stark cavalry.

The battle is a decisive victory for the Stark forces. Lord Roose Bolton reports Lannister casualties outnumbering Stark losses in a 5:1 ratio. Thousands of Lannister soldiers are dead. The Lannister commander Stafford Lannister was killed in the battle and a number of Lannister officers are captured.

Aftermath
Robb Stark faces dissent from his bannermen over keeping the numerous prisoners alive, but insists that they are treated well. He refuses to allow them to be tortured for information. Some Northern soldiers loot the dead. Robb meets a woman helping the Silent Sisters tending to the wounded.

King Joffrey Baratheon is furious when news of Robb's victory reaches King's Landing. He reacts by having Robb's sister Sansa Stark publicly beaten in his throne room. Lannister loyalists spread rumors that Robb used sorcery and an army of wolves to achieve his victory and that the Northmen feasted on the flesh of their foes after the battle.

The victory leaves the Westerlands lightly defended.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire books the battle is not shown directly but reported to Catelyn Stark. Roose Bolton doesn't participate as he's leading the joint Northern-Frey armies east of the Trident. Brynden Tully, Rickard Karstark, Galbart Glover, Greatjon Umber, Maege Mormont and Ser Stevron Frey take part. Karstark is the one to slay Stafford Lannister, while Ser Stevron Frey, Walder Frey's heir, perishes from wounds taken during the battle. Ser Rupert Brax, Ser Lymond Vikary, Lord Roland Crakehall and Lord Antario Jast, Lannister bannermen, are also slain.

As Tyrion points out, the Lannister army was mostly composed of green conscripts scraped together from Lannisport and surrounding areas, to try to make up for the loss of Jaime's army at Whispering Wood. While training the new raw recruits in their camp near the village of Oxcross, Stafford Lannister (a member of a cadet branch of House Lannister) felt so confident that he was safe from Stark attack in the heart of the Westerlands that he didn't even bother to post sentries.

The Stark force is able to achieve a surprise assault because they used a previously unknown path through the border mountains of the Westerlands discovered by Grey Wind. This allows the Stark army to bypass the Golden Tooth castle, a predictable choke point which guards the only major road leading through the mountains between the Riverlands and the interior of the Westerlands.

Oxcross is more of a rout than a pitched battle, with the surprised Lannister army massacred in its own camp. Brynden Tully led the vanguard of Robb's army. The Lannister survivors regrouped at Lannisport under Ser Daven Lannister, Stafford's son and widely considered to be a more intelligent commander than his father. Now even the conscripts meant to replace Jaime's lost army by scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower had been lost.

Numbers
The TV series version of Robb Stark's campaign has severely truncated several points in the campaign. In particular, Robb's army divided into two major parts before Whispering Wood, with 5,000 cavalry going west with Robb to Riverrun, and 16,000 infantry going east to fight Tywin at the Green Fork in a feint. In the books, this eastern Stark army is commanded by Roose Bolton, who is able to retreat from Green Fork in good order. In the TV series, the feint only consists of 2,000 men and is completely destroyed. Thus Robb has a full 18,000 men with him at Whispering Wood.

The number of Lannister soldiers in the Riverlands has been nearly doubled in the TV series, from some 15,000 under Jaime at Whispering Wood to 30,000. This may have been done to maintain the proportion that Robb's army was drastically outnumbered: if he fought using 18,000 Stark men against 15,000 Lannister men at Whispering Wood, it wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic.

The books state that 10,000 green Lannister conscripts were killed at Oxcross, and the few survivors scattered. The exact figure isn't given in the TV series though they do state that the army was destroyed and "thousands" of Lannister soldiers are dead.

What's really impossible to tell is how many men Robb was supposed to be commanding on the Stark side in the TV series continuity. In addition to his original 18,000 (which included the Frey levies he picked up when he passed the Twins), following Whispering Wood the Riverlords under House Tully threw their support behind Robb, drastically increasing the size of his army. Even so, within the TV series continuity itself, Robb may have left the larger part of his army at Riverrun to hold the line of the Red Fork, and only taken a fraction of his forces into the Westerlands.

Hopefully a later episode will state exactly how large the Robb Stark's army in the Riverlands is. Even in this scenario a figure of a five to one kill ratio would result in a higher number of Star dead than in the books, in which the battle was really a massacre and Robb's losses were very light.