""Of all I had, only honour and life have been spared"" Topic

… Pavia, February 1525

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This weekend Stuart visited and it being February 2025 there was only really one choice for the battle we were going to cover. Just a few weeks away from the 500th year anniversary of the capture of the French king on 24th February 1525, it had to be Pavia! This is not the first time Stuart and I have visited Pavia on the wargames table. Our first ever Italian Wars clashes were based around actions that took place during the siege in November 1524, link It was great to be able to revisit Pavia and game some parts of the battle itself.

As I am sure most people reading this will know, Pavia was quite a chaotic and complicated battle with different actions taking place at the same time around the siege lines of the city. We thought two dramatic parts of the battle would make for great scenarios and focused our games on these. Of course the obvious choice was the fighting in the park around Francis I and the clash between Frundsberg's landsknecht and the Black Band landsknecht. The other was based on the rout by the Swiss garrisoned at the five abbeys and their attempt to reach the pontoon bridge over the Ticino river. In both games the table layouts represented a very idealised and truncated version of the battlefield but Stuart and I both felt they helped capture the feel of the battle as did the scenarios described below…"

Camisado

link

Armand