Battle of Pavia - 500th Anniversary Refight

Last afternoon (technically one day before the anniversary of the battle) we refought the Battle of Pavia, to commemorate its five hundreth anniversary, using my homemade unit blocks, makeshift terrain and a modified version of One Hour Wargames. My wife commanded the French and I the Imperialists.

You can view the locations and initial dispositions on the map above, we are at the early morning hours when the Imperial arquebusiers are already occupying Mirabello castle and the pike blocks had deployed on the near side of the walls of the Visconti park.

My rules modifications were the following:

- Artillery cannot move and takes two turns to reload

- Cavalry and infantry has 12HP instead of 15

- Tailored the movement rates to the scale of the blocks

Otherwise it's the basic pike and shot rules from OHW.

The French had four infantry and two cavalry units, the Imperialists a detachment (4HP) of infantry in Mirabello, five infantry and one cavalry units, and an artillery unit which played no part in the battle (sort of like the historical account).

The battle would take twelve turns, at the end of which the side causing more damage to the other is the victor, accounted for as the number of hit points. Capturing King Francis (destroying his cavalry) is worth double points for the Imperialists, and recapturing Mirabello is +10 points to the French.

Battle opened on the near side of the Vernavola, with a pincer move by the imperialists to annihilate Florange's command.

The Swiss and light cavalry fought heroically and held off the Imperialists for a long while, effectively reducing the Pavia garrison and the two large Landsknecht pike blocks below fighting numbers.

Francis manages to react quickly to the Imperialist approach, and the Black Bands and Gascon infantry pour overwhelming fire on Frundsberg. The Spanish cavalry maneuvers for a better position to charge from.

The Gascons retake Mirabello, the Spanish detachment withers under concentrated arquebus fire. At this moment Lannoy's situation was a bit more dire, but he still had fresh cavalry reserves. 

On the other side of the Vernavola, Florange's light cavalry charges desperately for the last time.

The Swiss and Landsknecht fight to the last man on the east side of the stream, as they should do.

Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the decisive moment of the battle. Francis had blundered with his cavalry in range of the Landsknecht 'hedgehog' nestled in the woods, and took a bad beating from arquebus fire, after which Lannoy charged him with his fresh cavalry and wiped the gendarmes off the field. 

However, I allowed Francis to escape should he beat my die roll, and my wife rolled a six (left side of pic), so the King at least got away. Most of his army could not.

Here is Francis with his trusted lifeguard Jürgen, hiding in the woods after the battle. 

All in all this was a very bloody experiment, as we had high rolling dice (you know the ones, that never go below 5 or 6), so the two sides practically annihilated each other by the end of turn 5 out of 12. Perhaps with lower scoring dice, or using a resolution like Blücher (where more dice are rolled an only sixes count as hits) the battle could have dragged on, but such is fate.

The French and Swiss gave a lot better account of themselves despite the better Imperialist positions and their concentrated attacks. Kudos to my wife for playing the game with me and being a very heroic French leader.

Word about the battlefield: we played on a roughly 50x70cm area, on a sand coloured cotton mat. I deliberatly chose a rather small surface to reflect the confines of the Visconti park. 

The walls and streams are based on wooden spatulas from a hobby store, the walls are corkboard and the streams are blue wrapping paper glued on and drybrushed with grey and white, some flocking added. The built-in places are also made from corkboard and balsa. I did most of the terrain during the previous week, it took about two days. 

The wooded areas are pieces of felt pad cut to irregular shape, and pipe cleaner trees superglued on top.

The 'figures' are pairs of 17x20mm wooden blocks from Kik glued together and printed sprites from Junior General scaled to size. Kik is a local convenience store of German origin, they have some useful items at their hobby department, but otherwise their offerings are kind of rubbish. I bought a lot more blocks, as they work very well for stand-ins if one lacks the drive to paint figures, and they can be re-used, one just has to soak the paper print off.