Difficult to take a position on this one I am more pragmatic than any of the rest of you it appears but I don't think Iolar has the same viewpoint as me.
Interesting. Roberto's point of view is very similar to mine. If we give the one army taxes and conscripts, the other army is gonna want the same thing, and the people of Novus Mane will be forced to fight and kill one another as draftees. Pragmatically speaking, I Markoko think that resisting is the only moral and logical thing to do. It is the only thing that makes any sense to me.
Resistance can take many forms, and does not need to involve combat 
I take the viewpoint in general that unless you are going to lurk in an unnusual palce (haunted forest, underlake covenant, at sea , on top of a mountian) you are going to have to deal with the mundane and given that we have no social standing, no wealth and no army that means we largely have to put up with things as the problems of using magic to resolve this are large (unless we had a good mentam expert). Flanders is too heavily populated and the nobles too strong to just ignore them unlike say Novograd or the German forests.
I would be blaming Dragor for this mess as paying the taxes would have avoided this problem and at least one of my cahracter would probably kill him. The covenant should have dealt with this earlier and with more subtlety presumably the founders of the covenant who had more power handled things differently.
Of my 4 main characters I play in Ars amgica 2 of them would be with Roberto although they would be killing dragor as well. One (A quasitor) would be in faour of paying up fue to the hermetic legal problems but deep down would want to annihlate both armies. And Iolar I still don't know much less confrontational than most of my characters.
It is not 100% Dragor's fault. The tax collector would come, Dragor had no money to give him and so would just use Entrancement. He kept adressing the matter with Aelianus again and again, insisting that something needed to be done. Aelianus kept putting it off. From an objective PoV, I blame Aelianus for this mess.
Probably true But punsihing Magi is a lot more effort, and as they say sometimes killing someone is necessary to isnpire the others to try harder.
Dragor will loyally play fall guy, for a Tremere magus
Where is David* in all this?
*(now an NPC magus)
Halvard is just Proud +3 so he will not submit
Roberto is Reckless and Overconfident, he is not worried about repercussions 
Are all the troops in town or just some of them? Any still at the ford just in case the other force come back.
Harvard would like to know what time of day it is. He is hoping that it gets dark real soon.
About five or so of the men are at the ford the rest in the village. It is some time left before dark.
How many men are in the village? I had mistakenly thought we confronted them before they entered the town. I am sizing up the numbers and getting ready to cut loose...
Yes your right they are a bit outside the village but pretty close to it. They are in the outskirts of the village. They are about 30-40 soldiers. There are 40 households in the village plus pirates and magi.
Okay, I am ready to rock. Lets do this thing.
Going over what little we have for a mundane defensive force, we are not so bad off as one might originally think. We have Carlos and Pedro, Bob Backtalker, Jan Axel & Kilica, Aelfred the Gate warden, Thor Jonsson, and perhaps Marcello as well. Two of them are giants, and one has skill score as high as 9! Add to them however many pirates and townsfolk decide to stand up for themselves (though it won’t be as many as Roberto had hoped), and we are not so bad off after all. Think positive, the defender always has the advantage .
[color=blue]Int +2, Strategy 1 (tactics)
This force of 40 soldiers, how are they arrayed? Are they in any sort of defensive formation or are they all standing around focusing on their commander’s confrontation with the magi? What do I estimate would happen if we all just bum rushed them?
Aside from that, I wonder how he knows we are wizards. He called Aelianus a Wizard, and I guess it is pretty obvious that he is. I wonder if he know the rest of us are wizards. Or did some one rat on us? Or is it or reputation? Hmmm…
I think Marcello will not be quick enough to stop the fight. Angry and insulting blatant gift mage and war like challenging mage may not hold off Flemish 2 nice giant monk guy 
Roberto is a Warrior, but he is not warlike .
He is making every effort to avoid warfare, and the wise warrior know that the goal of a combat is to end the fight.
I must have misinterpreted the hand-on-the-hilt-of-a-sword-before-I-challenge-him-to-a-fight speak wrong. I'll page back to see where you hugged him. 
, point taken. But he put his hand on his hilt first. Ever think that maybe Roberto hides his own fear behind displays of bravado and recklessness?
I am saying this with a smile and a smirk. I would Roberto to do nothing less than challenge him. Halvard, with no Flemish, is not going to muck up and possible negotiations with his iris-less eyes and strange looks. Aelianus will do just fine with his blatant gift
I didn't think Iolar could add much to negotiations either so she is flying around