"Lansdowne 1643- trying to get together an orbat" Topic

I want to do this as my first ECW game at the club and gives me a small battle to work towards.
From an old thread I found this for Hoptons force
Horse :
-Sir James Hamilton's rgt
-The Earl of Hertford's rgt
-The Earl of Carnavon's rgt
-Prince Maurice's Rgt
-Sir Ralph Hopton's rgt

Foot :
-Sir Nicholas Slanning's rgt
-Sir Bevil Grenvile's rgt
-Lord Mohun's regt (vice : Major Slingsby)
-John Arundel's rgt
-John Trevannion's rgt

Dragoons
-Sir Ralph Hopton's rgt

Now the infantry were not all Cornish but i am wondering which regiments were. The other ones were from Devon I believe.
I am making inquiries into getting a copy of 'Battles of Lansdown and Roundway Down' by Robert Morris published by Stuart Press which should help but until i can get a copy to these shores down under i need something to go on with.
I believe Waller's infantry were
Tom Essex (ex-Lord St John),
Sir John Merrick,
Sir Robert Cooke,
Sir Horatio Cary,
Thomas Stephens,
Alexander Popham,
William Strode

Can anyone help with more details as it may be quite soem time before i can get my hands on the book.

If you can buy John Wroughton's The battle of Landsdown. ISBN 978-0-9520249-8-9.

It's about Osprey size soft cover book. The info is in there for the Royalists. Waller's is less clear however, I always thought that his own regiment of foot and that of Hasselrig would probably be present.

If you can't get that book or don't want to buy it let me know and I'll put the info here, it's just a lot to type. Basically 10 royalist foot units. 5 Cornish and one other very weak.

Sir Ralph Hopton had a regt of foot not Cornish.

There is a song about Hopton and the wheels falling off his cart, to do with the death of his colonels, Grenvile, Slanning, Godlphin etc.

The Royalist Regiments you have named were all Cornish but, as Mac1638 said, he did have his own Regiment

Royalist foot, sorry got it wrong, nine regiments not ten:

Cornish:
Grenville
Slanning
Trevanion
Goldolpin
Mohun

Three newly raised by Hertford marching West to join Hopton. Have to consider these as 'raw':
Marquis of Hertford
Prince Maurice
Brutus Bude (! yup really)

Plus
Bamfield weak so used as train guard

total 4,000 (I'm sure I've read that the cornish were considered to be 500 men apiece. That might give us three newly raised regiments averaging 450 each and 150 for Bamfield. That might not be right but it's all plausible.)

Horse nine regiments:
Prince Maurice
Earl of Carnarvon
Tho. Howard
Sir Humphrey Bennet
Marquis of Hertford regiment and Lifeguard (i guess one troop for the latter)
Hopton's

others not mentioned but you have some more names in your OOB.
2,000 horse
+16 guns and 300 dragoons

Based on Brig Peter Young's Western Army so old research and may be outdated now but it's a start.

Still no colours for Cornish foot known or uniform coats known. Might be blue or that might be a Victorian idea. A white cross on a black field has some leverage as a historical 'Cornish' flag but again this probably came about in Victorian times.

Paint them how you wish, currently nobody can tell you they are wrong. They might not have had any uniform at all. They fought very well at Lansdown and Hopton recognised that their high morale on the day would enable them to achieve wonders – he wasn't wrong either.

Most of the Royalist horse performed badly and routed at the mere sight of Hasselrigs lobsters. I wonder if that could be built into a morale check for this scenario.

Again sorry I don't have much on Waller's army, but you do get to field the fabulous Lobsters and they may have been 500+ men strong as it was considered a full regiment.

I'm fairly sure Waller's own horse, lifeguard, foot and dragoons formed part of this army.

Thank you for the information…it all helps…as for Wroughton's book it is proving very elusive or they wont mail to Australia. Amazon UK have it for 5 squid but they wont post it here!

If you don't mind paying for two lots of postage have them send it to my house and I'll send it on to you.

If you pop up your email here now, I'll grab it quickly then you can amend your message to delete the email.

Hi field marshal, this thread has some info on wallers foot TMP link , Ill dig out some more on horse and royalists, when i get back to pc, but I think you have most of the units accounted for.

Wallers and heslrigges foot definitely not present as neither were raised until the return to London after roundway down.

Oh, and hoptons foot were in the process of being raised but tricky to say how far along they were, it's usually assumed that he incorporated the remains of Brutus bucks regiment after buck was killed at Bristol.

For more regimental details try searching lansdown on the bcw regimental wiki here wiki.bcw-project.org it's still very much a work in progress and new contributors always welcome ;-)

Thanks Timmo I shall see if I can get it through a local source first and then if not I will take you up on your generous offer.

@Timbo- looks a great site! Hopefully I can contribute at some point!

Lansdown is one of the battles featured in the excellent 1643 campaign scenarios book (Bob Giglio) published by Partizan – well worth getting. It has a pretty good or at for both sides, and a map of the battlefield.

It's a to do on the tabletop – that hill is incredibly steep!

You're right – I've walked up it :-)

I was at the Sealed Knot refight in 1993. After attacking Freezing Hill we retreated across the valley and back up Lansdowne Hill. After that I gained a new respect for those Cornish pike who fought up that hill. Its steep, literally like the slope of the eves of a house as it was described by a contemporary.

The hill isn't all that high but it is close to 45 degrees in slope.

As an Aussie I envy my British counterparts the ability to just walk the fields. I plan to include a few battlefields on my next trip to the UK!