mpanko | 23 Feb 2017 6:10 p.m. PST |
I am new to this time period and trying to find OOBs or research that indicate the troop composition for various battles. Specifically references for European, Irish, Welsh, Scotts etc. Any help would be helpful. Thanks |
robert piepenbrink | 23 Feb 2017 7:43 p.m. PST |
May I offer my heartfelt sympathies? There are few wars in which the size and composition of English-speaking armies is so much debated and so little known. I have come to the conclusion that ALL Wars of the Roses OOBs are guesswork, and the size of forces not much better. That said, non-English troops usually appear when someone has just arrived from overseas and/or has local connections, like the Tyders bringing French/Bretons and raising Welsh for the Bosworth Campaign, or Lambert Simnel's Irish and German. Then we can all sit around and argue what troop types the foreigners are. (Are Simnel's Irish kerns or gallowglas, for instance?) Short campaigns without an invader are almost always with exclusively English armies. It's a colorful period. It has a lot of potential for campaigns. I have built it in several scales. But if you need trustworthy OOB, get out now. |
Glengarry5 | 23 Feb 2017 7:49 p.m. PST |
Germans? There were Germans too?! I knew about the others! Arrgh! Were they pike and shot? |
Sandinista | 23 Feb 2017 11:12 p.m. PST |
I thought Simnel had Flemish and Irish troops, not German |
Daniel S | 23 Feb 2017 11:15 p.m. PST |
Martin Schwartz led a force of some 2000 German (probably German and Swiss) mercenaries that had previously been fighting for Maximilian in the Netherlands, their arms seem to have been a mix of pikes, halberds, crossbows and firearms. |
Sandinista | 24 Feb 2017 12:46 a.m. PST |
I thought he was fighting with a smaller force for Max and then received the Yorkist commission, so may have had a small nucleus (10%?) of Swiss/German, but not all Swiss/German. |
vexillia | 24 Feb 2017 2:31 a.m. PST |
I am new to this time period and trying to find OOBs or research that indicate the troop composition for various battles. Specifically references for European, Irish, Welsh, Scots etc. Try the Poleaxed source books – link There are free samples of the maps and OOB to download. -- Martin Stephenson Vexillia: Wargames Miniatures & Accessories Shop | Rules & Games | eBay | Twitter |
MajorB | 24 Feb 2017 3:54 a.m. PST |
The VERY ROUGH rule-of-thumb I use is 50% archers, 40% billmen and 10% men-at-arms but as several others have said this is VERY conjectural as we really know very little if anything about it. |
robert piepenbrink | 24 Feb 2017 4:53 a.m. PST |
mpanko, you see what I mean? Not that people aren't doing their best, but they're dealing with limited, fragmentary and sometimes ambiguous information. It's an interesting and fun period, but you're not going to get the sort of OOB you get for Gettysburg, Waterloo or even Naseby. It's actually worse than a lot of the Hundred Years War. |
Mike Target | 24 Feb 2017 5:24 a.m. PST |
"Martin Schwartz led a force of some 2000 German (probably German and Swiss) mercenaries that had previously been fighting for Maximilian in the Netherlands, their arms seem to have been a mix of pikes, halberds, crossbows and firearms." So would these have been landsknechts or is it a little early for the full landsknecht look? I do pretty much exactly what MajorB does. |
idontbelieveit | 24 Feb 2017 7:09 a.m. PST |
Great thread on this on LAF: link |
Jamesonsafari | 24 Feb 2017 9:20 a.m. PST |
There are guys with bows. Some of them wear pretty jackets in a uniform way. There are guys with polearms. Some of them wear pretty jackets in a uniform way. There are guys with polearms and lots of armour. That's really all that you need to start. |
robert piepenbrink | 24 Feb 2017 4:25 p.m. PST |
I loved the LAF thread. Probably worth noting that it looks as though for a while "archer" may have been a word meaning "soldier and not a man at arms" which makes our scanty material even less reliable. Mike,I wonder about that one myself. Schwartz is either a really early proto-landsknecht, or a really late something else. When I don't want to worry about the Irish, I worry about that one. We've got one source--one of the period experts can correct me--which suggests that some of Simnel's foreigners were armored and some were not. I can't remember which way he called it, but with one comment by one source we also have to allow for fumblemouth. Problem is, it can go either way--pre-landsnecht Germans with some armor and the Irish are kerns, or early landsknecht Germans and the Irish are gallowglasses. I think a lot of the fun of WOTR has to be the color, the personalities and the diplomacy, because if your main concern is firepower and armor--range, rate of fire, penetration and such--you need to go to WWII where we actually have information. (Me? I do 15mm "heroic scale"--that is, 60mm wide bases, and usually twice the figures. If I find some figures I like, I build a few more stands, and I overdo standards and livery jackets. I can mostly find what I need for a game, but I'm not sure I have any idea how some of those battles were fought in real life. None too well is my guess--rather like my own.) |
Daniel S | 24 Feb 2017 4:51 p.m. PST |
Schwarz & Co were probably late 15th C Swiss & Germans rather than proto-landsknechts. Nothing I've read from either the Netherlands or the Stoke campaign suggests that they wore clothes resembling the early landsknecht clothing found some 10-12 years later. Of course modern day writers cheerfully lable Schwarz' troops "Landsknechts" and even at times illustrate them with images made 30-40 years after the battle. (I.e high landsknecht fashion). |
Puster | 24 Feb 2017 5:32 p.m. PST |
Apart from their outfit, imho these most likely were "proto"-Landsknechts – perhaps even no longer "proto", as they were most likely a part of the infantry that Maximilian had tried to form with mainly German recruits and Swiss instructors after Guinegate to get effective units loyal to him. When money was short, loyality only carried so far, though in the case of Schwartz these units also had his leave, as the widow of his deceased father-in-law, Margaret (of York), played an important part at his court. In the same year the first independent (from Maximilian) appearance of Landknechts was recorded at Calliano. These contingents probably had many Swiss mercenaries among them – both because at that time the distinction between Swiss and German was mainly that of provinces within the HRE, and because the hatred between both sides had not yet developed – those fighting for money in the same fashion and speaking the same language would be lumped together. |