Those of you who have read the blog attentively will possibly be aware that I like the odd landing in force sort of scenario. So I was pleasantly surprised when the War of Stuart Succession campaign threw one up early on. The situation is that the French, transported on Spanish ships, are attempting to land in Hampshire, where they are opposed by the local trained bands.
This might sound, to you, unlikely, and I would agree. But the diplomacy which brought this to light was controlled by the dice, and that is what happened. I suppose that we can rationalise it by arguing that Henry IV is probably as interested as the English in who controls the other shore of the Channel, and has no objection to the idea that it should be him. As the French do not have a fleet to speak of (it was mainly concentrated in the Mediterranean and consisted of galleys and, anyway, had been starved of funds since the 1540s) getting an army to England was, of course, a bit of a problem. So the Spanish Armada of Flanders was roped in, using the newly fund friendship between Henri and Isabella.
Almost inevitably, however, the French failed their GOOS roll and the trained bands were called up against them. A few dice rolls determined that the English would oppose a landing on the beaches, rather than defend a port. Given my lack of modelling capacity for siege/landing scenarios, this was probably just as well.
The picture shows the situation just after the start. The Hampshire trained bands are on the left, with their demi-lancers at the front and the infantry poised between the woods. I confess I was in two minds about the English defence, whether to ‘fight them on the beaches’ to coin a phrase, or to hold back and hope to defeat them in the defensive positions.
The French are, of course, at sea. The order of arrival was determined by dice roll, and they were to arrive in two waves. The boats will have to return to their baseline, take on more troops, and return to the beach in order for the full French force to arrive.
The picture above shows, as it were, crunch time. The first wave have hit the beach and are mostly landed. From the right, we have some Swiss pikes with the general, two bases of musketeers, a base of dismounted Millers and some enfants perdu skirmishers. You may have also noted that my hesitations about the best form of English defence have been resolved. The demi-lancers, under the general, are moving up, as are the first-line infantry.
It has to be admitted that the dice rolling on both sides was poor, but it was worse for the French than the English. While the geography of the table and English deployment meant that the French troops on the beach had just about rallied by the time the English arrived, that is about as far as their luck went. The English, too, were a bit slow to get moving, their reserve regiment only starting out halfway through the French assault.
This picture shows the English counter-attack developing. The demi-lancers trotted into the French. This was because, as the English general, I did not want to lose control of them because I thought they would be useful later. You can see that their attack has been wildly successful (did I mention the poor French dice rolling). The Arquebusiers second in from the right have vaporised. The Swiss pike on the extreme right are doubly shaken, and the French general has taken a swim. The only bright spot for the French is that their skirmishers have disrupted the incoming English foot on the left of the shot. You can also see that only half of the French boats have put off to collect the next wave.
The demi-lancers rallied back, and the English foot have moved into the fray. In the centre the dismounted Millers have made short work of a base of English shot, but the pressure on the French is only likely to grow as more foot move up and the demi-lancers are poised for another go. Without a general the French on the beach just cannot get themselves organised on mutually supporting units, not to mention that a third of the initial landing force has vanished.
It did not get much better for the French. One of the demi-lancer bases charged some shot on the beach, and the latter simply fled. To add insult to injury the dismounted Millers, supported by Swiss pike, have just attacked the English trained band pike in flank in the centre. The English have just shrugged this off (a 6-1 dice roll to the English. Did I mention the French dice rolling?). As it happened, this was the last action to take place. The loss of the shot base caused the French morale to go to ‘withdraw’, so they did.
Well, the French invasion has been thoroughly thwarted, and Henri IV’s GOOS score will have dropped rather. Not that he was really envisaged as a major player in the campaign, I admit, and his invasion attempt was a bit of a surprise. Partly, with it, I had hoped to finally get my French Wars of Religion Millers into action. Well, some of them sort of did, but they could have done to have been mounted to get the full effect. The army list, incidentally, calls them ‘cuirassiers’ but I know what I mean. Perhaps that is a hint that the French Wars should be next up.
Still, the campaign continues. James IV is poised in Berwick to march to London, and the complicated naval situation in the Channel has not been resolved by this action. The French army is back in France and the next bit of foreign intervention, should there be any, seems to be up to the Spanish.
Opposed landings can be very interesting wargames, I have found. My track record is rather spotty, though. The Samurai succeeded a couple of times against the Koreans, and the Spanish landed successfully in North Yorkshire in the Armada Abbeys campaign. The Commonwealth failed once and succeeded once landing on Jersey, while Caesar managed it against the British. So it comes out as a fairly balanced sort of game. If the defenders can handle the landing forces piecemeal they have a chance. If not then the organising attackers seem to gain the upper hand. Mind you, they could just have tried to find a quiet beach somewhere to land.
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