a bit like those stories of drivers driving off piers into rivers because they are too busy looking at their GPS to notice there is no road.ġ453, dog end of the Hundred Years War between England and France. Now, did I mention the Battle of Castillon? That’s an example of something else…. How would you model betrayals in a wargame scenario, or include the possibility in a rule set? In-battle betrayals are really common in civil wars, another classic being the Battle of Bosworth where the Percies of Northumberland sat tight and let King Richard III lose, and the Stanleys changed sides and ruined what would otherwise have been the coolest cavalry charge in history. It also turns out that “camp” really means “fortified artillery park”. Presumably Lord Grey was always going to change sides, so the Lancastrians had lost the battle before the first arrow was loosed. So here we have a battle that would have been boring to wargame using authentic tactics - essentially a test of your army list - that actually turns on a betrayal motivated by off-table politics. The Lancastrians break and rout into the shallow river where they trample each other into a mass drowning. The Lancastrian leaders get cut down - nasty things civil wars not much chance of a ransom. The rest is History, which is to say ugly and nasty. They’ve got a ditch, wooden stakes, perhaps carts, certainly cannon. They even help their new mates through the defences. Warwick’s men advance into a hail of armour-piercing arrows, cannon balls and crossbow bolts. It looks as if he’s going to try to grind through the defences - the battle will be down to killing power and morale.Īs soon as the vanguard reaches the defences, Lord Grey, leader of one of the defending units, displays the Warwick bear-and-ragged-staff flag and has men change sides. They’re gearing up for a rerun of the Battle of Castillon (an English defeat so utterly embarrassing that the swords of fallen English men-at-arms are a scholarly category in their own right!) The King’s forces have fortified themselves into a bend in the river. King Henry VI - well His Grace’s advisers, anyway - the Lancastrians, if you must - versus the Yorkists led in this case by the Earl of Warwick. (Click to buy print)ġ0th July 1460, near Northampton, England. The King’s forces have fortified themselves into a bend in the river.
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