English Civil War Battle 5
My thanks to Tom for the following material, which is an account of the second of two ECW battles fought during the month of September 2023.
In this battle the Parliamentary forces deploy their infantry opposite the battlefield objective and their two mounted commands on the left with orders to move round to attack the battlefield objective from the rear.
The Royalists deploy with the C-in-C’s mounted command on the right with their infantry command opposite the central objective and the second cavalry command on the left.
Parliament has the first move and their infantry moves forward in two lines leaving their artillery to cover the flanks. The cavalry commands advances on the left.
The battle broke down into three parts.
On the Royalist right their C-in-C and four units of horse faces off against ten units of Parliamentary horse. When cornered, all four Royalist horse units charge, initially forcing several units of Parliamentary cavalry to retire but are eventually overwhelmed by weight of numbers, leaving the Parliamentary horse to move to attack the Royalist foot from behind.
In the centre, both sides foot move towards the hill, the Royalist foot angling its advance to hit the left of the Parliamentary line. One Royalist unit manages to break two Parliamentary units in close combat and, although down to 'five' strength, pushes through the line. However, eventually superior fire power of the Parliamentarians breaks two Royalist foot units.
Over on the Royalist left the second Royalist cavalry command moves round the flank of the Parliamentary foot, overrunning the two Parliamentary artillery batteries. However, the Parliament C-in-C turns two units of foot to face the Royalist horse and hold them off.
Both sides had thirty percent casualties. Parliamentary forces had a 2:1 advantage on the battlefield objective giving them 10 points while the Royalists had taken two batteries of guns giving them 10 points. So the game ended up with both sides having 80 victory points.
So although the Parliamentary forces had the upper hand the game ended in a draw.