Friday Night Game - Wars of the Roses Battle of Northampton

Yesterday evening, Mark, John Chris and I met up at Julian's place for our semi regular Friday night game. We used Marks plastic Perry figures and Julian's mixed metal ones to refight the Battle of Northampton from the Wars of the Roses, using the To the Strongest rule set. Below is a brief description and map of the actual battle from Wikipedia:

On 26 June 1460, Warwick, Salisbury and Edward landed at Sandwich with 2,000 men at arms. King Henry VI and his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, were at Coventry with their small army. Warwick entered London on 2 July with an army of supporters numbering approximately 10,000.

The King's forces took up a defensive position at Northampton, in the grounds of Delapré Abbey, with their backs to the River Nene and a water-filled ditch in front of them, topped with stakes. The defending army was around 5,000 strong, consisting mainly of men-at-arms. The Lancastrians also had some field artillery.

While approaching, Warwick sent a delegate to negotiate with the King on his behalf. The Lancastrian commander, the Duke of Buckingham, replied "The Earl of Warwick shall not come to the King's presence and if he comes he shall die." During Warwick's advance to Northampton he was twice more denied access to the King's person. Once in position, he sent a message that read "At 2 o'clock I will speak with the King or I will die".

At two o'clock the Yorkists advanced. The men were in column, but the hard rain blowing in their faces somewhat hindered them. As they closed with the Lancastrians, Warwick was met by a fierce hail of arrows, but the rain had rendered the Lancastrian collection of cannon quite useless.

When Warwick reached the Lancastrian left flank, commanded by Lord Grey of Ruthin, treachery ensued. Grey had his men laid down their weapons and simply allowed the Yorkists to have easy access into the camp beyond. This treachery was the result of a secret message from Lord Grey to March saying that he would change sides if the Yorkists would back him in a property dispute with Lord Fanhope. Certainly Warwick had ordered his men not to lay violent hands on ordinary soldiers – especially those wearing the black ragged staff of Lord Grey's men. There may also have been inducements and promises of high office by Warwick. Grey became Treasurer of England in 1463. After this, the battle lasted a mere thirty minutes. The defenders were unable to manoeuvre inside the fortifications, and fled the field as their line was rolled up by attacking Yorkists.

The Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Egremont and Lord Beaumont all died trying to save Henry from the Yorkists closing on his tent. Three hundred other Lancastrians were slain in the battle. King Henry VI was captured by an archer, Henry Mountfort

 For our game, Chris and I took the Lancastrian defenders whilst Julian, John and Mark were the Yorkists. Chris and I had two commands each, our three opponents a single "battle", but we were slightly outnumbered. I commanded the right of our position - the right wing was under Duke of Buckingham (I think) and was 100% secure, but the scenario allowed the Yorkists to secretly nominate one of the remaining three defending "battles" to be a potential traitor. They had to get a unit into an adjoining square and then roll on a D6. Initially, anything but a 1 would get the target unit to change sides - 2 or 3 they just got out of the way, 4-6 they actually turned on their former colleagues. However, for every unit we destroyed or pushed back prior to the Yorkist reaching the target unit, the die roll would become successively harder!

The initial deployment - our artillery is in the middle right of this picture. Johns Yorkist command directly in front of our defensive line, Julian to the left, Mark to the right

 One of Marks beautifully painted and based Perry units - Mark provided all the troops on the Yorkist side

 Close up of one of my units of longbow men - these were deadly effective and as soon as John was in range, unleashed a hail of arrows, supported by the fire of our two rudimentary cannon. (Fortunately Julian obviously did not know about the rain in the real battle or he would probably have made a rule that they could not fire them!)

 Another close up of the advancing Yorkists. After a couple of moves, Chris and I had combined such effective fire power on their centre that John had lost two or three units and his commander had been forced to scuttle from one unit to the next, as his men were slaughtered around him!

 Marks Yorkist left flank advances on my right wing unit, pinned in between the barricade and the river Nene - if they were pushed back, they would drown....

 A view of the centre midway through the game - Johns original command of 6 units has been reduced to two by our devastating archery. This also helped us when Julian finally managed to reach our line and attempt to induce treachery from one of Chris's units - he rolled a 4 but because we had killed so many Yorkists before he arrived, he needed a 5 or 6 - so our line stood firm!

 Mark continues his advance - he had some success with archery and destroyed one of my units and disrupted another (far right by the river). The gap in the left of our line is where Johns final unit of knights charged one of my guns. He managed to kill the crew but was then in a position where combined fire from the remaining gun plus archery destroyed this last unit

 Johns command figure flees from the table!

 A general view of the centre near the end of the game - the empty space in the centre where Johns six units of Yorkists had been is eloquent testimony to the power of the Lancastrian longbows!

How it looked from the Yorkist side as the game ended - only one unit of Julian's cavalry and one unit of Johns foot knights actually reached our barricade, and both were wiped out. I don't think Chris lost any units at all - I lost one gun and one unit of archers who were wiped out by Mark. Its possible the real battle would have had a similar outcome if it had not been for the treachery of Lord Grey of Ruthin. We would certainly have been in a bit of trouble if Julian had succeeded in turning one of Chris's units as he attempted to - we were just lucky we had so many casualties on the Yorkists early in the game!

The extremely effective archery of our units was the key to this victory - we have often had games with these rules where both sides pelt each other with arrows to virtually no effect and I think his was what happened between Julian and Chris - my archery against John was however outstandingly effective and it meant Julian could not get the potential traitors in our midst to change sides mid battle! All good fun (for we Lancastrians) - I am sure we will do it all again soon. Tomorrow I am off to Barry's for an all day Marlburian game so a report on that outing will follow in due course.