Rocroi, 1643 - Part II

The battle was fought out to a conclusion Tuesday evening. It took another 2-3 hours for 5 more turns. A total of 9 turns in 5 hours. So much longer per turn than I'm used to with the Twilight of the Soldier Kings rules for the 18th century. The game took longer too by an hour or two. Maybe that's because of lack of familiarity with the rules. 

I left off last time with the French gaining the upper hand on the wings. On the French left they had inflicted more losses on the Spanish cavalry to even up the odds, but the French had retired back over the stream to lick their wounds. The Spanish were unable to follow them as their wing had become 'Fatigued', as had the Spanish on the other flank. In the centre the Spanish, led by the veteran tercios, had got slightly the better of things. Here is an account of Part II, with pictures and captions.

End of turn 4 in the centre. Spanish tercios had charged the French.

End of turn 4: Some of the Spanish allies (probably German) had also charged the French

Turn 5: Spanish tercio in the distance had pushed their French opponents back

Turn 5: Right in the middle, the French infantry had fired on the Spanish battery, clearing off the gunners. Unfortunately my gunners are glued to the bases so guns and men have to be removed. A tercio advances to the attack.

Hawk's eye view of Spanish veterans at the charge. These were mostly conversions from musketeers.

On the Spanish right wing, their cavalry was successful in rallying (hence the disappearance of loss/disorder markers). The French cavalry, mostly out of shot, were doing the same thing.

Turn 6: French right. Only 1 battered Spanish brigade remains (circled). One French cavalry unit has gone haring off on an uncontrolled pursuit. They would be off board for several turns.

Turn 6: In the centre a French brigade is about to be attacked from two directions (left of pic). Action became rather confused after this, but the Spanish had the upper hand.

Turn 6: French left. Having rallied the French begin to cross to the Spanish side of the stream again.

Turn 7: In the centre the Spanish have caused the French line to buckle and Condé sent the reserve to help (bottom right crossing the stream). The Spanish veteran tercios are hard to defeat in IDV: they get extra saving dice so unless you inflict several hits in a turn things just seem to bounce off them like 2punders hitting a Tiger.

Turn 7: One of the French brigades has been routed and it bursts through the reserve cavalry disordering them.

Turn 7: further to the left another French brigade has been chased off back across the stream. At least behind the stream they come to a halt - linear obstacles cause routers to stop on the other side.

Turn 7: But over on the French right some relief for the French as they rout the 5th and final enemy brigade. One French brigade is still off table in pursuit.

Turn 7: General situation. Spanish and allies to the right of the line. Off camera to the right the Spanish have begun to refuse their infantry flank ready for the expected onslaught of French cavalry.

Turn 8: Hawk's view again of the general situation with new French cavalry attacks left and right.

Turn 8: An oblique view of the same.

Turn 8: French right. One French cavalry unit has pursued a defeated Spanish brigade off table, whilst another has been bounced by the fresh enemy infantry. 

Meanwhile in the centre, the battered French unit circled manages to hold off and temporarily bounce the Spanish veterans! Behind them another battered unit marches back across the stream to avoid being totally wrecked and to allow French troops to come through. You really need to allow plenty of space between units!

Turn 9: This looked to be the highpoint for the Spanish in the centre. They have inflicted enough losses on the French in the centre to 'Fatigue' the French infantry, meaning they cannot attack any more. But their flanks are vulnerable to French cavalry (see arrows). In addition 2 French cavalry units were due to return in the Spanish rear.

At this point, the Spanish had to dice for 'General Will' (i.e. whether they had the morale to continue). The test was failed and they had to retire. The IDV rules have a provision for calculating if there is a pursuit and if so what the damage caused is. Given the French preponderance in steady cavalry and a fairly involved dicing methodology, the Spanish ended up with a total of 8 wrecked brigades out of an initial 21, plus one captured general. A resounding French victory, but this time, the veteran tercios survived. Not the heroic end for Alatriste envisioned by Perez-Reverte.

Rocroi, 1643 - Part I

It was time to ring the changes, as I indicated in the previous post. After what must be 5 years, I got the pike and shot toys out. Specifically these are mainly ECW models, but they will stand as proxies for the French and Spanish and their allies for a refight of Rocroi. Rocroi, as I'm sure you know, is often portrayed as a 'historic watershed' during the series of conflicts broadly known as the Thirty Years War. Actually this was really part of the longer term rivalry between France and Spain, and it is said that this battle marked the passing of the "Top European Nation" crown from Spain to France. "The death of the tercios". I'm sure there's been revisionist historiography saying this wasn't the case, and that there's been revisionism of the revisionist view. There always seems to be. Not really my area. But I'm not going to let that stop me get the toys out and pretend that they are Spanish and French - at least they have similar hats and weapons. Just don't look at the flags.

I used the usual Wiki page,  but looking now, I wish I'd looked at the French and Spanish versions too. The English version has the Spanish outnumbering the French in both horse and foot. The French version agrees, but the Spanish version has the French with less foot but more horse. All three use the same battle map (oddly). Here are the links for comparison:

Battle of Rocroi 

Bataille de Rocroi 

Batalla de Rocroi 

Another handy source is Battlefield Travels https://battlefieldtravels.com/battle-of-rocroi/ which superimposes the respective armies onto a modern map of the area. It also has some lovely photos of the fortifications of the town of Rocroi (re-built by Vauban later in the 17th century) and a still from the final scene of the film Alatriste. There's a link in the article to a YouTube clip from the film which I urge you to watch - in fact watch the whole movie if you can find it.

The rules I am using are In Deo Veritas. Units are 'brigades' of 600ish cavalry and 1200ish infantry, but because of issues with the movement rate and my basing that I covered in an earlier post, I upped these to c.800 and c.1600 respectively. I understand that by this time the Spanish tercios were closer to the 1500 mark than the 3000 of earlier decades. Using the English Wiki numbers I landed on the following numbers of units:

	Spanish & Allies	French
Horse	10	9
Foot	11	10

I also gave them both a couple of stands of field artillery.  I designated the 3 Spanish foot brigades as veteran, All the rest were trained. To even things up a little I classed one French cavalry brigade as Cuirassier which gives them an extra saving die. All the rest I classed as 'Light' cavalry (or 'harquebusiers' in the English parlance of the day). I haven't looked into this very deeply, so I quite accept that I may be wrong and more of both sides should be Cuirassiers.

Models are mostly from the Pendraken 10mm ECW range, with a few from their 'League of Augsburg' range (I like the hats and poses) plus a few from Irregular. The table, by the way is 1800 x 1000mm. I should probably have used the boards to take it up to 1220 deep given the movement rates but I simply couldn't be bothered to lift them in from the store.

So without further ado here are the opening moves told in pictures with captions.

Set-up. French to the right. Trees just for the look of the thing. Stream is classed as a linear obstacle - movement stops for a turn on reaching it before troops can cross.

The French left. To keep things simple for myself, the French cav are in helmets and the Spanish are in floppy hats.

View from the Spanish right.

'Plan' view. The infantry units at the top with the deeper bases are the Spanish as opposed to all the Allies, (Germans mostly) with normal depth bases. This is purely to help me identify them on the table.

From behind the Spanish right. Rocroi with is (unpainted!) walls.

Turn 1: Cavalry clash on both wings. Cavalry moves at 18 inches so you are into the action quickly. An inch by the way is 40 yards. A truly grand tactical move!

Turn 2: On the French right not much has happened in the cavalry melee. Most hits inflicted have been saved. Just one hit remains on one Spanish unit. There are 4 brigades on each side here. Another Spanish brigade is edging round, just visible bottom right. I have 4 cavalry bases, each 30x30mm, plus a command stand per unit.

Turn 2: On the French left a similar picture has emerged as on the right.

Turn 3: The French infantry has reached the stream and will be held up for a turn. The cards are used to determined the order of movement. 

Also Turn 3: French to the left of the yellow line. Two Spanish units have suffered two unsaved losses. Three and they rout. I made a mistake with both sides in having the second lines too close to the first. This meant that on a 'push back' (4 inches) if the first line went through the second, both took another hit.

Turn 3: French left. The French have pushed back one Spanish brigade (which disorder their supports). However, overall the French have suffered more hits (4 round bases to 2 in the picture)

Turn 4: French right. Far right, a French unit has charged into the Spanish unit coming round the flank and inflicted 1 hit. In the centre the French unit has been hit twice but has inflicted a third unsaved hit on the Spanish and they will rout, through the unit behind taking them with them. It's not looking good for the Spanish unit on the left of the picture either.

Turn 4: French left. All the French units on this wing have suffered one or two hits. It's in the balance.......

Turn 4: French left. ....but les messieurs get lucky and the Spanish unit suffers another unsaved hit and routs, through the unit behind (inflicted a hit on them as they pass through). Rout moves are 27". This took all three routed units off the board, but I left them on the edge as a reminder.

Turn 4: Centre. French behind the yellow line. The line bows because the units there are advancing and to indicate this the command stands are in front. Two of the 3 veteran Spanish brigades and one allied brigade have charged the French, pushing one French brigade back (left of picture). The French second line are also delayed by the stream.

Turn 4: Overview of the French left. Two Spanish units have routed off.

As a result of the routs, the Spanish have to take a wing morale test. It fails, so moves down a step (indicated by a round base placed by the wing commander. This means they are unable to advance. And are a step closer to routing.

On the French left, the Spanish cavalry wing here has also taken and failed a wing morale test.

I had to leave it here on Monday and haven't had a chance to finish the game yet. After four turns the French have got the upper hand on the wings, having removed the Spanish advantage in numbers and dented Spanish morale. In the centre, the picture is slightly better for the Spanish. Given the number of losses on the French side, it is not all over for the Spanish on the wings. It will probably be best for the French to not tempt fate and to try to rally off hits before charging in again on the left.

Ships and Planes

The Ships

Bit of a departure for me this. At least partly. One of the books that I fairly recently bought was a bargain from Naval and Military Press. It wasn't something that I was looking for but because it was great price it was a good opportunity to spread my wings. The book in question was Lepanto by Nic Fields. [Insert barrel-scraping pun about  the French version of Puss in Boots].

It's a great introduction to the subject, at least from my point of view being a complete novice. It's broken into three main parts. The first concerns the various parties and factions involved. The second part deals with the nuts and bolts of the technology, the men and how galley warfare worked. The final part covers the lead up to the battle and the actual combat and its aftermath.

There is a fourth part which describes some of the stories of participants, which included the Spanish Golden Age writer Cervantes. 

The Planes

Bit of a ruse this because the planes in question aren't flying machines but the drawings of a fortress I am planning to build. These are rough (very rough) attempts at drawing using the guide given in Duffy's Fire and Stone. I did two versions on spare pieces of A4 paper I had lying around. A4 works because it is about 30cm in length, which is a bit shorter than a mile in the ground scale of my preferred battle rules, where 2cm = 100 yards.  This would allow for a pretty big city. From memory, I think Prague in the mid-18th century was about a mile long excluding the Kleine Seite.

The idea is to create a template on paper, and then to use this to cut out the material for the walls.

The Duffy guide (based on one of Vauban's 'systems') has bastion faces of 50 toises (100 yards). Or in other words 2cm. All the angles are worked out so the flanks of each bastion covers the face of the neighbouring bastion. The first drawing came out more 'wonky' than I would like. For example, bastion #3 in the picture below could be moved so the apex is further 'north'. However, I'm not that bothered about a really regular shape as nothing is in reality.

The first system. I can see here that I haven't drawn in the walls joining bastions 8-9 and 9-10.

The second attempt was to get bastions on a bigger scale. The reason for this is to fit my 3cm wide artillery bases in the bastions. I doubled the scale so that the bastion faces are 4cm long. The problem is that where the outer trace takes a sharper angle, the bastion neck is very narrow and the gun bases might still not fit. Allowing for the depth of the walls I really don't think I can go less than 4cm long faces to have an internal length of 3cm. I personally don't think this looks as good as the smaller scale with more bastions.  Another advantage of the larger scale is it will look better with my 10mm ECW and AWI figures.

The second system

Both versions are also deficient in three key aspects:

1. No gates
2. No river - there probably should be at least one waterway involved
3. No covered way or ravelins etc.

1. could be fairly easily addressed. For 3. I need to plot the whole thing on a bigger sheet of paper. 2. is a bit trickier and will need more thought. I think I need to look at several examples of city plans from the period. Also I need to look at how many had the earlier Italian style bastions with retired flanks and how many had the straighter 'later French' style, especially as I seem to be basing a lot in the Italian theatre these days. Though to be honest, the thought of carving recurved bastion flanks scares me.

Daytrip to Denia

The Margravina and I had a trip to Spain recently and on her birthday she wanted to go to the town of Denia (in the Province of Alicante, just south of the border of the Province of Valencia). Where specifically do you want to go to says I, it's your day darling*. Let's start with the castle says she. OK, anything for you my love. Well it was more like a treat for me.

* a word I don't think I've ever used except in jest. 

We did have a wander around the town afterwards, but I won't bore you with pics. I'll justify the following photo on the grounds it is military history.

View from the town square. The Council Tower in the middle. It's part of the lower wall of the castle.

Before we climbed the hill to the castle we came across this display about air raid shelters dating to the SCW.

And this tunnel through the hill on which the castle stood was one of them.

Detail from the above poster.

I like this type of poster. Would you call it Naive Art?

Inside the castle we went inside the Council Tower and found this exhibition. The Moriscos were descendants of Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Which just goes to show, you cannot fend off a tiger by giving it a scrap of meat. 

Apologies I can't remember who this chap was.

Still in the Council Tower: a display of arms and armour from the period of the Expulsion (1609-14)

Can't not have Morions. There were a few slightly different styles on display.

The business end of a halberd.

Various breast plates (Guardapits) and a backplate.

18th C book on the history of Algiers (Argel).

Plan for the redevelopment of the castle.

Various views from the wall.

Ah ha! We get to the WSS. Memorial to the defenders of "the Valencian laws and privileges", appropriately written in the Valencian language. This region, along with Catalonia, was a stronghold of support for the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne. The Bourbons were eventually successful in this, 2nd siege, of the town.

View down on the ravelin 

A reminder that Denia is a port. Above is a ferry arriving from Ibiza.

Montgó which dominates the town.

Inside the above gate, another image of the Expulsion of the Moriscos. Apparently the process was carried out most thoroughly in the Kingdom of Valencia and it led to the depopulation of much of the countryside and economic collapse of agriculture. This probably didn't help the tax base of Spain when hostilities with the rebellious Dutch recommenced in 1621.

Another reference to the siege in 1708. A street named after the breach in the walls. Again in the Valencian language. "Bretxa" is pronounced "Bretcha".

I picked up a pack of playing cards in one of the ubiquitous "Chinese Bazaars" which each town seems to have a number of. You can buy almost anything from these places.

Literally the Clubs suit!

Here's a snapshot history of Denia. https://deniavacation.es/denia-history/