"Earthworks and Terrain for Castillon 1453" Topic

What would the earthworks and buildings around Castillon have looked like? And do any of the terrain manufacturers sell any particularly relevant products?

What size of models you would be using with them?

Sorry – 6mm.

The main French camp, which was some distance from the town itself, was surrounded on three sides by earthworks consisting at least of ditch a, earth wall and a wooden palisade on top of it. These were constructed in a couple of days, so I would not expect anything too elaborate. There would be positions for shooting artillery from behind the fieldworks, possibly protected by rotating mantlets.

As for buildings, I have not been in the area, but my understanding is that the local architecture is essentially southern European in style, so you could try looking for buildings marketed eg. as northern Italian in style. For gaming purposes I presume you would be most interested in the priory, where the small garrison of francs archers was located.

Some Ospreys have "artists views" on what the defences may have looked like. One of the colour plates in the English Longbowman (Warrior-series) depicts it as seen from the perspective of attacking English archers – a scary sight indeed. The Fall of English France 1449-1453 (Campaign-series) on the other hand shows a sight from the French perspective, as well as a map of the general area. But in both cases those colour plates only display a small section of the fortifications.

In any case, if you are going for 6 mm and want to use the terrain for practical gaming purposes, you probably need to simplify the terrain a fair bit.

Thanks very much, really helpful

The French camp was by the riverin a flat meadow. Whilst the camp was fortified it would not have been that formidable a fortification because it was, as Greifbringer says, built quickly to protect against a sortie rather than stand a seige. IIRC the French had fortified a monastery or church near the town. The area is one of mediterranean style housing with limestone or plastered walls and pitched pantiled roofs. I visited Castillon, its a town on a low bluff and not hugely defensible.

Shows the walls of St Emilion which is in a much better state of preservation than Castillon la Bataille., again, from memory. The stone in the region is very like Cotswold stone, but goes to grey white rather than golden brown.