Missilery- The Great Italian Wars

It is of interest to note that alongside the rise of firepower the humble javelin or dart still had its place on the battle field.  It was, as it always had been, an effective man killer.   

There was a codicil, the user had to be brave, strong and skilled to achieve the desired effect.

Archery too required a considerable amount of training and physical ability, even with the windlass crossbow, to produce an effective archer.  

The arquebus required neither great strength or exceptional courage.  Although of course there was skill and it did make a difference.  That said, the arquebusier did not need extensive training. The basics were easily picked up and with some practice he was good to go. Nor was he a finite resource , most men were perfectly acceptable potential arquebusiers.

The investment was required in the technology rather than the man.  Fire arms were expensive and needed to be well maintained.  Likewise good gunpowder required expert manufacture, it had to be kept carefully and was used up quickly.  Crucially, it could defeat even the best armour.  It was a revolutionary technology.

Some of our period protagonists were swift to embrace this new technology.  Others were less so.  In either case there was a transitional period.  French armies had a significant artillery component alongside numerous  cross bow men.  The Spanish Colunella was effectively a protected missile delivery system, The Spanish got fire power early.  The others were not far behind.

I envisage French crossbow men operating in swarms swift in advance or retreat.  Of course dense blocks of pike men made very good targets and had to be screened by their own loose order missile men.  Pike men couldn’t stand too long under skirmish fire.

Effective skirmishing required a great deal of good order and management. That might not always be available. Even when present such men were always vulnerable to any type of cavalry.

Part of the charm of the Great Italian Wars is that the old and the new existed side by side and the new was still a work in progress.

Accordingly, I’ve made artillery potentially devastating.  Arquebusiers are more effective against armoured men and yet remain vulnerable to all other troop types.  It’s a balance.

As Gonzalo is a Card driven game each unit needs to be readily identifiable when their card comes up.  As in life the swiftest method is a distinctive flag.  I found that there are many units but too few distinctive flags available. 

To help this I’ve made a couple of St. Martin flags for the French.  Saint Martin was popular with the French common soldiery.  Presumably due to his having been a soldier and his kindness to the destitute. They understood destitution and soldiering.  He was a real person and an interesting one if you are inclined to study the Migration Period of Late Roman history.

As a final thought I may introduce a Master Gunner Card.  Coming up next- a game of Gonzalo.

 

Cavalry Fighting - The Great Italian Wars

Cavalry could be complex.  Consider the French Gendarme, he is organised by the Lance.  This is where complexity begins.  The Lance consists of the gendarme himself and depending upon the period a varied number of followers. The followers themselves have different functions.  There should be archers and pages. 

The archers are sometimes just that. They might sometimes fight on foot and might not too.  At other times they were what others might call a Demi-lancer. 

On occasion they perform both functions.  

The pages don’t get much of a write up but we see them, I think, now and then.  Sometimes they are operating in a group murdering the wounded and unhorsed gendarmes from the other side.  There might be the chance of ransom if someone aristocratic passed by.  Otherwise, it was a rainy night in Pavia for the stricken.

Sometimes the archers didn’t have any bows and fought as lance armed heavy cavalry. Sometimes they had bows but were terrible shots, couldn’t hit a Palazzo with a Lira De Braccio type of thing.  On other occasions they had bows and were proficient in their use of them.  They might dismount to shoot or might not.  The type of bow used could vary, crossbows and long bows and short bows were all possible.

The only constant in an Ordnance Lance is the gendarme who is always a heavily armoured lancer. Even then he might have barding for his horse or not, or just a head piece or no protection at all. The archer appeared in a variety of forms

This means that if our sources say there were 100 Lances it could mean 300 men or 500 or more.  It was conditional and all we can say is that it certainly doesn’t mean 100 men.  

For my own convenience I’ve represented the French Lance of the Ordnance as a grand composite unit.  First are the gendarmes, then the archers and then the true skirmishers.  That is to say three units under one banner.  I think that probably merits giving them a sub commander.

Anyhow, here is the current Cavalry Combat Table from Gonzalo. It owes a fair bit to Furioso.

unit	Number of ranks fighting	Number of dice per base	Special rules
Gendarmes	1	4	All units facing Gendarmes lose 1 D6 per base from their combat dice.
Gentes De Arms	1	4	When fighting un-barded cavalry, a score of 5 will cause a horse kill on the enemy unit.  The rider can no longer fight with his unit.
Ducal cavalry	1	4	None
Heavy cavalry	1	3	None
Stradiots	2	2	Can evade.  In the first round of combat any score of 6 by the Stradiots will cancel an opponent’s hit and add it to its own total.
Genitors	2	2	Can evade.  In the first round of combat any score of 6 by the Genitors will cancel an opponent’s hit, and add it to its own total.
Arquebusiers and Cross bows	1	2	Can evade if charged
General or Commander fighting			The unit joined by the general rolls 1 additional D6 per base.

You can see the sort of dynamics I want to model.  I should add, I'm going down the Saving Throw route.  

The figures above are from Venexia, Legio Heroica and Khurasan.  I think they match each other well enough together.

While we are discussing Gonzalo I've made some progress on the Cards. Here you can see the Artillery and Charge Cards.  I wanted them to look distinct from the Unit Cards and so used original artwork from the period .

You can see some Unit Cards here.

I've also expanded the Charge Card to include the Swiss, as Gonsalvo wisely advised in last week's comments. More of that when we see the completed and expanded Swiss.

More soon.