Roman Legionary Cohort

Roman Legionary cohort number three finishes the first six months of planned work on the Romano-Dacian collection.

Cohort One
Cohort Two

As with my previous two cohorts, these chaps are sporting black shields and will be part of a planned group of seven such cohorts to complete this legion, allowing for my plan to have my legions with seven full strength cohorts at around 3,000 men that allows for the fact that many legions would have struggled to turn out ten full strength cohorts and 5,000 men.

In addition my three base cohorts allow the flexibility to combine another three bases of legionaries with them to represent a double strength first cohort with which I plan to attach the eagle bearer and primus pilus, with all the added punch and raised morale that such an option would imply.

Alongside my seven legionary cohorts will be five auxiliary cohorts to complete my eventual legion, with the plan to build two such legions for civil war match ups.

The Victrix legionaries come with loads of options to create a really dynamic looking cohort and with a change of shield and additional helmet plumes can be transitioned into a Praetorian cohort, one of which I will be adding to my forces in the second half of this year.

The final touch when putting these units together is the addition of LBM shield decals which have revolutionised the way we model ancient and medieval collections and like adding colours to horse and musket units really helps to bring the whole look together.

The theme now moves distinctly Peninsular War Napoleonic, with the first part of our tour underway with the Corunna Retreat, Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo visited, so I will be aiming to get some posts up in between the driving.

March of Death, Sir John Moore’s Retreat to Corunna, 1808-09- Christopher Summerville

I find myself typing up this review aboard the Brittany Ferry ‘Cap Finistere’ somewhere in the Bay of
Biscay heading to Santander from Portsmouth where we set out the day before, admiring the new
British aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, as we left harbour.

The brand spanking new HMS Queen Elizabeth  seen in Portsmouth as we set of on our three week tour of the Peninsular battlefields in Spain and Portugal this summer

Rather fitting setting off from Portsmouth rather like the troops of Sir John Moore and Wellington, only the trip should be rather more comfortable and only a day's sailing

Carolyn, like Lord Nelson, is not a great sailor and, as we planned to take our car to Spain this year to
do a three week driving tour across the country, and having opted for the sea route rather than
driving across France to the Spanish border, we decided to pay extra and have our own en-suite cabin
at the front of the ship complete with a very comfortable lounge area where I find myself typing up
this post looking out to sea.

We will be landing later today and driving to Gijon for an overnight stop before pressing on to
Corunna and the start of our route retracing the retreat of Sir John Moore and his army during the
winter of 1808-09 pursued first by Napoleon and later by Marshals Soult and Ney over the Galician
mountains.

Thus, with this first part of our tour taking in major Peninsular War battle sites as we head south
across the Iberian Peninsula, I was keen to have read this title recently acquired from Pen & Sword
Books.

The paperback version of Christopher Hibbert's, 'Corunna',
an earlier title with a very similar theme and approach to 'March of Death'

March of Death is one of Pen & Sword’s, Frontline Napoleonic Library Series and was first published by Greenhill Books back in 2003 and seems to me to follow very much in the theme established by
Christopher Hibbert’s earlier title ‘Corunna’ in that with the use of many first hand accounts from the
various memoirs written after the Peninsular War, the account sets out the circumstances that Sir
John found himself presented with and the decisions he made in light of them to try and make the
best of a very unfavourable situation, and with little political support from a government at home
that had significant members within it who positively detested Sir John and all he stood for in terms
of enlightened and humanitarian leadership.

The book only took me about three days of occasional reading and presents a compelling, chronological account of the Corunna campaign with plenty of those first-hand accounts that I was
seeking to help enliven my look at the same places today as I make a more leisurely journey in the
opposite direction, well clothed, fed and not having to journey on foot amid the carnage and terror
that accompanied those that made the opposite journey over two hundred years previously.

Like the author, I very much hope to spend time considering the events of this campaign before
turning my attention to the later ones of Sir John’s successor the Duke of Wellington and will try to
put the pictures I am hoping to take in greater context based on the accounts held in this book.
The Corunna campaign is one, I think, that lends itself perfectly to a skirmish rule set such as Sharp
Practice or Rebels and Patriots and this book provides much inspiration for putting together the
several hotly contested rearguard actions fought from Sahagun and Benevente to Lugo prior to the
set piece battle of Corunna itself, an action I composed a scenario for in the O’er the Hills scenario
book.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2019/01/oer-hills-is-published.html

Forget about all that nonsense accusing Napoleonic British cavalry as being uncontrollable 

Any Napoleonic wargamer still bought into the myth that British cavalry was uncontrollable and rash
when committed to action will find many accounts in this book to discount the myth once and for all,
with Lord Paget’s Hussar brigades trouncing the pursuing veteran French cavalry again and again, in actions at Sahagun and Mayorga, not to mention severely embarrassing the Chasseur of the Imperial Guard with their drubbing at Benavente and the capture of their General, Lefebvre Desnouettes – surely a case for rating the Chasseurs of the Guard as rash or simply regarding such actions as the occasional error of war that all excellent military units are guilty of occasionally.

The descriptions of the battle of Corunna itself were excellent, particularly those of Major Charles
Napier commanding the 50th Foot above the village of Elvina as the French charged into the village to be met by the 50th in fierce hand to hand and bayonet to bayonet fighting.

Not the 50th Foot but the 42nd who fought alongside them at Elvina indulging in the
bayonet to bayonet stuff as portrayed by Harry Payne

Finally the descriptions of the death of Sir John Moore and his burial, attended by his closest
companions throughout the campaign, in the dark hours before the British retreat were very vivid
and moving and seemed a moment of conclusion to the misery and suffering of the soldiers and the
innocents who died throughout the days leading up to and during the battle.

Burial of Sir John Moore after the Battkle of Corunna 1809

As with most accounts of the Corunna campaign the maps are sparse and cover the essentials,
namely the retreat route, a map of Spain and Portugal and the Battle of Corunna. Against those I
have only found in other sources a hastily drawn map of the reargaurd action at Cacabellos but will
be relying on the written accounts in this book to try and work out the other actions described
during my visit.

The book is laid out as follows:
List of Maps
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Prologue
1. No Such Command Since Marlborough
2. The Bubble Bursts
3. The Race for Benavente
4. Vivan Los Ingleses!
5. Abandoned by Everything Spanish
6. Every Man for Himself and God for us All!
7. Bayonets Crossed and Blood Profusely Drawn
8. The March of Death
9. The Stragglers’ Battle
10. Thank God! We are now Safe!
11. A Killing Day
12. I Hope My Country will Do Me Justice
Epilogue
Appendices

•  Sir John Moore’s Order of Battle
•  Sir John Moore’s Losses
•  Biographical Notes on Major Sources

Select Bibliography
Index

One slight critic of this book particularly based on wanting to use it as an adjunct to my tour of the Corunna retreat route and the battles along it, is the lack of place names referenced in the index, a noticeable absence when looking to match up personal accounts with places visited.

Other than that, the book makes a first class read and I will no doubt be quoting some of those references when I get around to post some pictures of our tour

The book is composed of 240 pages cover to cover with three maps and twenty-five black and white
pictures at its centre.

At the time of writing it is available from Amazon at £9.99 plus £2.80 P&P in hardback

Roman General Officers

Followers of the blog will know that during my trip to Salute earlier this year I picked up some Roman generals from Victrix which I have been eagerly looking to put together and so, to add in to my collection plans for the first six months, I decided to build and paint half the pack, leaving me another six generals to add a bit later on.

My inspiration for my Roman senior officers came from a Ronald Embleton set of picture cards illustrating Roman troops on Hadrian's Wall that I picked up on a visit to the wall way back in the mid eighties, and the one below in particular illustrating as it does, a Legionary Legate together with his Primus Pilus or chief centurion and a couple of tribunes.

The detail on these new Victrix commanders was a pleasure to take a brush to and they really compliment my growing collection of Victrix Roman troops and will work alongside my Aventine commanders as well.

However my Foundry Roman and Dacian commanders look a little diminutive next to these well fed chaps and so I look forward to Victrix producing a similar set of commanders for their planned Dacian collection of figures.

This chap is painted up to represent a Roman legate with his primus pilus ready to call forward his troops to administer a bit of 'Pax Romana' to the natives.

Next up I have a senior tribune in combination with another senior centurion, swords drawn and ready to lead the men into the fray.

And finally another potential legate in company with one of his tribunes, swords drawn and at the tilt, perhaps bringing forward the cavalry in a charge to end the barbarian resistance.

 Victrix are to be congratulated on producing some very fine figures and I really enjoyed putting these chaps together.

Next up Roman Legionary cohort number three

The Key to Lisbon - Kenton White

As part of my pre-reading before setting of on my three week road trip across Spain and Portugal looking at some of the most important battle sites of the Peninsular War, I have just finished reading 'The Key to Lisbon' by Kenton White and published by Helion & Company.

Helion are fast becoming a prolific publisher in the world of military history books and a company, it seems to me, that are producing titles designed to fill a lot of the gaps many of the other leading publishers in the field seem prone to miss.

Not only that, but the titles I have purchased from them in recent times are impressive in the detail and focus they bring to a given subject and definitely do not fall into what I would call 'coffee table' books with lots of illustrations but light on substance.

With several days put aside to base myself in Cuidad Rodrigo, Fort Concepcion, Lousa and Trujillo to allow a good exploration of the Portuguese/Spanish border and the routes into and out of Portugal from the frontier, the publication of this title was most opportune and coincided with another fortunate piece of work just published and reviewed here on JJ's (see link below), namely Tim Saunders new book looking at the two sieges of Cuidad Rodrigo and the Anglo-French confrontation covered here in Kenton White's book.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-sieges-of-cuidad-rodrigo-1810-and.html

The two books are well worth reading together and compliment each other very well in looking at different aspects, in detail of the third French invasion of Portugal in 1810/11.

As the summary on the back of The Key To Lisbon highlights, the campaign of the third French invasion of Portugal marks a crucial turning point in the Peninsular War and I would go further and add that it also marks a similar turning point in the whole war waged against Napoleon.

The success of Wellington's strategy to defeat the anticipated invasion by a French army, expected to number 100,000 men and to be led by the Emperor himself, marked the high water mark of French aspirations in the Peninsula and established the first significant check on Napoleon's grand ambition to become the dictator of mainland Europe as a whole and the establishment of his Continental blockade of British trade.

Wellington and Massena, two commanders both under pressure to not lose, but Wellington with the overall control to decide his own strategy for the campaign, with the freedom to adapt his plans according to circumstance.

The allied handling of the campaign and more particularly the command exercised by Wellington in the face of political criticism from home and in Portugal fed by the freely expressed opinions of the 'croakers' or officers within allied ranks, contrasted sharply with that of the French and Massena, struggling to put into operation a plan devised by an Emperor decidedly out of touch with the realities on the ground and seemingly unable to direct the forces required to support the grand plan of invasion envisioned in the orders delivered to Massena himself.

The campaign would be studied in the years following, most particularly by Russian general officers, and the lessons learned in how to neutralise one of the key concepts of French Napoleonic warfare, namely 'scorched earth tactics' preventing the French from supplementing their supplies with the produce of the invaded territory, coupled with an aggressive partisan war in the French rear area, would be noted.

Those lessons would come home to haunt the Emperor himself as he lead an even greater army into the depths of mother Russia in 1812 and learn for himself some of the lessons that frustrated Massena's army stranded before the Lines of Torres Vedras, cut off from supplies and with lines so insecure that he could not be certain of any of his communications reaching their intended recipient most of the time.

As the summary points out, surprisingly, this important campaign has attracted little attention from historians and I would concur as someone who has been in search of a detailed focused analysis of it for a number of years.

As well as looking at the preparation, planning and execution of the campaign by both sides, we get a very good coverage of the key engagements that characterised it, with key commanders such as Ney and Craufurd and their  command decisions, thoughtfully assessed. 

This book sets out to examine the background leading up to the decision by Napoleon to launch this third French attempt to subdue the Portuguese and finally expel the British from the European continent and the preparation, planning and execution from a strategic, operational and tactical perspective that both sides adopted in anticipation and the implementation of those plans.

Throughout the reader is given the opportunity to assess how the two commands performed given the assumptions made and the plans established on the base of those key assumptions; and there in lies the keys to success and failure.

The book clearly shows that both sides made mistakes in the campaign throughout, from its start point and the assumptions made to the reactions caused by events during it, but that Wellington made fewer mistakes than Napoleon and Massena and that more of his key assumptions proved to be accurate than those of the French, a fact that massively undermined French objectives and ensured to a large extent the end result.

 General Robert Craufurd features large in the first half of the invasion and Wellington was right to
value his leadership qualities despite his somewhat headstrong and rash tendencies. His Leadership of the
Light Division would be sorely missed in the pursuit of the French in 1811

A large portion of the book assesses the intelligence gathering of the contending armies leading up to and during the campaign comparing the difficulties both armies faced in its gathering and the steps taken to prevent it reaching the enemy.

In many regards Wellington had a distinct advantage with, in the main, a supportive local population, better access to the theatre of operations enabling a very good understanding of the country and landscape together with a detailed knowledge of French forces, their command structure and position at any given time.

The French struggled in nearly all these aspects of intelligence gathering, able to offset some of the gaps in their knowledge with a surprising network of local spies within the allied territory and the very helpful British press; who only to eagerly gathered up the gossip from the 'croakers' within the allied army and fed off the official reports obtained from within the government at home who would today put a whole different conception on the term 'leak'.

These reports littered the British free press with very accurate and highly sensitive reports on British plans and troop numbers that Napoleon placed much reliance on, controlling a state, as he did, where the national press only printed what it was told to.

This lack of self censorship within the British government in particular only added to Wellington's problems causing him to limit the information he was prepared to share with his political masters at home and adding to an unnecessary sense of mistrust, something that would gradually diminish with allied success, but a factor that added to the restriction Wellington felt in his handling of the campaign and the risks he was prepared to run.

That said the French seemed unable to use the information that was within their control, with officers within Massena's army, such as Junot seemingly unable or unwilling to share their undoubted knowledge of the terrain that would likely face the French on their approach to Lisbon.

The question of the maps used by the French in their planning and ordered march routes has long been a debated factor in the French invasion, together with their use of unreliable, former Portuguese army officers as local guides.

The French it seems were in possession of accurate maps within the archives in Paris before the invasion and yet we see reports of French general officers attempting to follow march routes on useless maps such as the Lopez map seen below, with many off the villages and even roads not shown or if shown, often very inaccurately, and giving a poor indication of distances and gradient.

The infamous Lopez map, here showing seemingly flat open plains below Torres Vedras on the approaches to Lisbon.
This wouldn't have fooled General Junot but it caught many of the other French generals by surprise, causing Massena to exclaim in annoyance, on seeing the forts constructed on the many steep hill tops in the area for the first time "Wellington didn't build the mountains!"

Alongside the planning, intelligence and logistics involved in this campaign, Kenton White gives a thorough day by day, week by week account of the fighting as the French moved further and further into Portugal after the taking of Cuidad Rodrigo,

The combats are accompanied with excellent maps together with first hand accounts of the fighting by participants and observers and a serious effort is made, based on that detail to give an accurate report on where the various forces involved were at any particular time. So much so that I will definitely have this book to hand when standing on and at the bottom of Bussaco Ridge, trying to work out Ney's VI Corps approach march.

This book together with my copy of 'Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula' documenting the accounts on Major Edward Cocks (see link below to my post looking at this book) who was a first hand witness to many of the rearguard skirmishes fought by the British cavalry with the French will be an invaluable pairing when following the invasion route and the French retreat route in the weeks to come.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2015/05/intelligence-officer-in-peninsula.html

Alongside the combat descriptions, we get a very good analysis of the one of the big surprises that greeted the French invasion, together with the creation of the Lines of Torres Vedras, namely the rebuilding of the Portuguese Army and its full inclusion into the allied divisions and its initiation to battle at Bussaco Ridge.

The Portuguese military was totally discounted in French planning for the invasion, and Napoleon continued to base his directions to Massena on the basis that the French commander faced a British army barely in excess of twenty thousand men, whereas the allied army that completed the retreat into the the lines around Lisbon would number some sixty thousand men which would only increase with later reinforcements.

The Battle of Bussaco announced to the French a new potent military force within Europe and together with the militia and partisan groups would allow Wellington take the war into Spain following the expulsion of Massena's army, and the British commanders negative assessment of any future cooperation with Spanish forces after his experiences in the Talavera campaign.

The conclusion to the book sees an assessment of the planning and final execution of the campaign with the British ambition of defending a Portugal free of French troops and Lisbon enabled to supply future allied operations achieved and with the failure to prevent that objective, together with the closure of the last European port to British merchants and trade as part of Napoleons grand commercial war against Britain to coerce negotiations for an end to hostilities failed.

The scapegoat for Imperial failure was of course Massena, who didn't want the job in the first place, was promised the one hundred thousand man army that both Napoleon and Wellington assessed as being the size of army required, only to be given command of sixty thousand instead and instructed by his master to follow the Emperors plan which was and continued to be based on erroneous or badly incomplete assumptions.

Perhaps Massena took comfort in his meeting with Wellington after the war, with the latter generously assessing him as the best of the French commanders he ever faced, and one he never underestimated.

If I were to mention a small criticism, and I would emphasise, small, that I did pick up, was a few slightly irritating spelling errors and missed words within the text that had me occasionally going back over a sentence to clarify my understanding, but I have encountered a lot worse examples and this should not put off anyone interested in understanding the contents of this book from getting a copy.

As you might have guessed, I really enjoyed reading this book and can highly recommend its inclusion on the Peninsular War book shelf, filling as it does a much needed gap in the literature covering this part of the war.

The Key to Lisbon consists of 274 pages, including ten chapters, as follows:

Contents

List of Plates

List of Maps

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Spain will not Delay us Long

2. Hic Sunt Leones

3. Blowing up Bridges

4. I Want to Enter Lisbon as Soon as Possible

5. A Cautious System

6. 1810

7. The Prince Never Had a Single Guide

8. The Portuguese Behaved Most Gallantly

9. The Retreat Was Ill Managed

10. A Liberatacao

Conclusion

Appendices

I    Dramatis Personae

II   Memorandum for Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher, Commanding Royal Engineers

III  The Allied Army

IV The French Army

Bibliography

Index

At the time of writing I see this title is available through Amazon for £15.51 plus £2.80 P&P which for a hardback book of this size and quality seems to me to be very good value.

Offa's Dyke Walk - Part Two (Battles of Shrewsbury 1403 & Mortimer's Cross 1461)

A reconstruction of the armour worn by Sir Nicholas Longford, who was knighted by King Henry IV 

on the morning of the battle of Shrewsbury and who was killed later in the fighting

The Battle of Shrewsbury, 21st July 1403

Following our day out exploring Offa's Dyke and the local area and a very pleasant stay in Shrewsbury we decided to get a good start to the next day to enable us to see as much as possible before beginning our journey home.

Our second day would focus very much on the medieval history of this area of the Marches with Shrewsbury very much at the centre of that history being the start point of two very different but similar campaigns for two of England's greatest warrior Princes and later Kings.

My first introduction to the Battle of Shrewsbury was as a sixteen year old school boy reading Henry IV Part One as part of my O' Level English Literature studies. I vividly remember trying to imagine the look of Harry Hotspur, Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff as they made their way to the climax of the story, the battle of Shrewsbury; the inevitable conclusion of the tension in Henry Bolingbroke's, now King Henry IV's troubled court following the coup that brought him to power in place of the weak King Richard II who conveniently died in prison.

The battlefield of Shrewsbury in relation to the town can be seen here, with the field of battle just below and to the left of 'Upper Battlefield' top right.

Thus with school boy memories flooding back, Steve and I set out to explore the battlefield that lies close to the north-east corner of the town close to the modern day ring-road.

This was not Steve's first visit to Shrewsbury or its first appearance on JJ's Wargames, as Steve did a post about his visit back in 2016, including his visit to the Resource Centre and Farm Shop indicated in the satellite view of the battlefield below by the yellow pin.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2016/08/didnt-we-have-lovely-day-day-i-went-to.html

An overview of the Shrewsbury battlefield with my tentative positions for the various forces, and possible numbers involved, with our path around the field marked in white arrows, starting at the car park.

I should say right up front that as with most descriptions of medieval battle sights, the positions of the various forces, their numbers and who did what to who at any particular time is very often open to debate and still a subject of much of it, given the limited resources available to more detailed archaeological research into these sites and the limited often unreliable primary sources.

So with those caveats out of the way, I have turned to the Battlefields Trust as a major source of guidance for the various explanations about these battle sites and have selected the versions that seem most plausible to me, or as good as any other, having now walked the supposed terrain. 

http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/medieval/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=39

In addition Steve brought along his copy of the Osprey title covering the Battle of Shrewesbury with Graham Turner's superb artwork helping to bring the events to life. Whilst I turned to Hugh Bicheno's two books covering the battles and events of the Wars of the Roses when looking at Mortimer's Cross.

The view from the car park area and the Royal lines, with the church making a perfect land mark (centre right) indicating the left flank of the rebel line possibly held by the Earl Douglas

A simple summary of the battle fought on the 21st July 1403 sees an embattled King Henry IV working hard to establish his right to rule now under pressure from one of his biggest backers, the powerful Percy family who having bankrolled his bid for power were now calling for that investment to be repaid, but at a time when Henry's coffers were empty.

The star of the Percy clan was the young son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland, Sir Henry 'Hotspur' Percy who had been successfully enforcing Lancastrian rule around the country, with two successful campaigns concluded in Wales against the rebellious Owain Glyndwr in 1401 and 1402 and just recently the defeat of the Scots at Homildon Hill and the capture of Scottish nobles including George, Earl Douglas.

The latter battle only added to the strife between the King and the Percy's with the former insisting on keeping the prisoners rather than allowing the Percy's to sell them back for the expected ransom.

Enclosures and the resultant hedgerows have altered the look of what would have been a more open battlefield perfect for the lines of archers on both sides, as the Royal line advanced across the fields seen here.

The result of all this tension saw Hotspur at the head of a rebellion looking to gather in his former adversaries, Douglas and Glyndwr heading towards Shrewsbury and the Welsh Marches where he hoped to rally his supporters in such numbers as to overwhelm any force Henry could hope to muster.

For Henry, it was a race to put his army between Hotspur and the Welsh rebels under Glyndwr and hope to beat the former before the two rebel forces could join together.

The focal point for this race to the Marcher lands was Shrewsbury held at the time by a Royalist garrison under the command of the king's son and heir, Prince Hal, later to become King Henry V, victor of Agincourt, twelve years in the future.

Now very close to the Rebel line with the church tower looming over the intervening trees and where the two lines now battered after the exchange of arrows prepared to close in hand to hand combat

The winner of the race to Shrewsbury was the King who had managed to put his army in between Hotspur and the Welsh border forcing the rebel commander to pull back from the town and find a suitable ground to offer battle, with his enthusiastic if less experienced troops.

The ground chosen found the rebel army atop a slight ridge offering great sight lines for perhaps his most potent force, the Cheshire archers, some of the best bowmen in England and who, following the breakdown in pre-battle negotiations, took a terrible toll on the Royal lines as the king's army closed.

A view of the ridge line held by Hotspur's rebel army across ground on the rebel right flank still open to view as it would have been at the time.

Some accounts suggest that this accurate archery led to the collapse of the Royalist battle under Edmund, Earl of Stafford, possibly acting as a vanguard in the Royalist advance.

http://www.battlefieldsofbritain.co.uk/battle_shrewsbury_1403.html

The advantage this seemed to offer Percy's rebel army probably explains the rebel attack following up the no doubt confusion in the Royal lines with Hotspur and Douglas pressing hard to get at the king himself and look to end the battle there and then with his death.

St Mary Magdalene's Church occupies the site of the chapel established on the saint's day in 1406 to commemorate the battle and for saying prayers for the souls of the fallen soldiers many of whom are thought to lie close by in mass burial pits.

However the king's supporters closed around their monarch and fended off the assault, holding their ground while Prince Henry started to assert his presence on the rebel right flank by driving in on the rebel line.

At some time during the fighting both Prince Henry and Hotspur took arrows to the face, proving fatal in the case of the latter and leading in turn to the collapse of the rebel line and their pursuit for three miles by the victorious royal army.

The original chapel was converted into a college of chaplains in 1410 and these are the remains of the fishponds created close by to provide the college with fish for the kitchens. In 1548 the college was closed reverting to a Parish Church

As with the actual numbers of men who fought the battle, the numbers that were killed is probably speculative, but one account suggests possibly up to 5,000 men were killed and wounded:

"There fell on the king's side ten knights, many squires, more yeomen, and three thousand were gravely wounded. On the rebel side fell most knights and squires of the County of Chester, to number 200 beyond gentlemen and footmen whose number we do not know."

Blood red, Flanders poppies make a suitable backdrop to any battlefield and these were in full bloom on the edge of Shrewsbury

Close to the site of the battle lies the Battlefield 1403 exhibition site and Farm Shop which is free to look around and has some great exhibits that really help to bring to life the background to the battle, the look of the soldiers and the weapons they were using

https://www.battlefield1403.com/

There are two full size manikins on view illustrating the look of the knights and the more common archers who would have stood in the lines of both armies that day

The knight depicts the appearance Sir Nicholas Longford, knighted by King Henry IV on the day of the battle.

His harness depicts the late stage of transition from mail to plate armour, still using an aventil (camail) which is attached to his helmet and a mail shirt, but displays the inclusion of plate armour for improved protection.

His helmet (bascinet) is fitted with a 'pig faced' visor which was supposed to protect the face of the wearer from cuts and stabs, not to mention arrow strikes, something, Hal and Hotspur seemed to have forgotten.

The harness is completed with a solid breast plate underneath a short surcoat or jupon which bears his coat of arms (paly of 6 or and gules a bend argent) and a knightly girdle of metal plaques at the hip.

The shoulders are protected by overlapping plates (pauldrons) and his arms by a vambrace (upper and lower) and his elbows with winged counters.

He wears the advanced design of gauntlets, with over lapping plates on his fingers.

His legs are protected by cuisses on the the thighs and greaves on the shins, with an attached poleyene protecting the knees.

On his feet are overlapping plates (sabaton) covering his shoes onto which is strapped the rowel type spur.

Over his shoulder Sir Nicholas carries a heater shield that will be soon made redundant by the advances in armour design.

At his hip he carries a sharp tapered sword and also a rondel typed dagger and he would have also carried a pole arm, such as a pole axe or glave.

The archer illustrated below is fairly typical for the period with a modicum of protection with his open faced helmet, padded jack, greaves and buckler shield.

His principle weapon is the longbow with which he and his fellow archers would have wreaked havoc on the opposing lines of foot soldiers and which came to dominate the battlefields of the period.

It was back in 2017 that I posted about a visit to the Mary Rose in Portsmouth (see the link below), where among the artifacts recovered from the great ship are stacks of long bows many still in their packing cases and the skeleton of one of the archers who displays in his bones the inevitable changes to the body that occur with practice at shooting this weapon.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2017/04/portsmouth-2017-mary-rose.html

The skeleton shows a very powerful man with a very developed upper body capable of stepping into and drawing this very powerful bow and more than capable of getting stuck in to a melee situation when required, very different from the tailors dummy in the picture below.

A slightly 'camp' looking archer, but I am sure you get the idea of how these troops appeared on the day

The various types of arrows are displayed below ranging from the short crossbow bolt on the left to the armour piercing bodkin shafts on the right.

Hotspur is reported in some accounts to have been killed instantly by an arrow to the eye, but Prince Hal was hit below the right eye, requiring the king's surgeon to rig up a device to insert around the arrow head and open the wound up to allow the arrow to be extracted without the barbs causing further damage during the extraction - all this without the relief of any pain controlling medication!

King Henry V pictured in profile, which given the unsightly scar he was left with under his right eye
after Shrewsbury explains that this was really his best side!

Prince Henry survived Shrewsbury but his face would carry a reminder of that day with his arrow wound leaving his face badly scarred on one side, likely explaining his side on portrait and giving the later King Henry V the look of a battle scarred veteran rather than the way he has been portrayed in film versions of Shakespeare's great play.

Cry God, for Harry, England and Saint George! - King Henry V as portrayed by Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1944 film version of the play, although I think I prefer Kenneth Branagh's version from 1989.

The battle broke the challenge of the Percy family and consolidated the House of Lancaster in the form of Henry IV as the anointed King of England, but that hold would prove to be tenuous as the greater struggle to maintain and hold on to territory in France and another weak king in the form of Henry the VI, Henry IV's grandson, would cause the whole charade to unravel into the Cousins War or Wars of the Roses.

The Percy coat of arms

As well as the Percy family, other coats of arms of other noble houses were on display at the centre and it was gratifying to note that the Devon Wargames Group is blessed with its fair share of nobility among the lesser yeomanry of the club!

Devon Wargames Group nobility

Battle of Mortimer's Cross,  2nd February 1461

As mentioned in my preamble to the Battle of Shrewsbury its comparison with the Mortimer's Cross campaign is different and similar and the seeds of the latter lie sown in the former in that Henry Bolingbroke usurped the crown from Richard II and seemingly legitimised the later attempts by the House of York to similarly usurp Henry VI by the precedent the former created.

Like Prince Hal, the eighteen year old Edward Earl of March started his campaign from Shrewsbury in the January of 1461 when he learnt of the death of his father at the Battle of Wakefield on 30th December 1460, leaving him as the new Duke of York and potential heir to the throne.

The roads leading from Shrewsbury via Ludlow to Mortimer's Cross (red marker) along which Mr Steve and I travelled enjoying a perfect pub lunch along the way.

The Marches were well known to Edward, spending much of his teens at Ludlow and in the care of other Yorkist Marcher manors, whist his father was away dealing with the power struggle at court.

He was likely to have gained much from this experience getting a schooling in the more practical military matters of policing the Marches rather than the tournament skills based upbringing in a court-orientated household.

Not only that, but the Marcher Lords considered him as one of their own, and they would be by his side in this his first independent command, men such as Herbert of Raglan, the younger Walter Devereux of Weobley and Roger Vaughan of Tretower and Crickhowell.

Satellite view of one of the presumed battlefields, with one interpretation of the two armies and their upper and lower estimated strengths 

During the winter of 1460 and following the victory of Queen Margaret's northern Lancastrian army at Wakefield, the Lancastrians in Wales under the leadership of Jasper Tudor sought to raise an army to march in support of Margaret as she headed south towards London, looking to secure the release of her husband Henry VI and his restoration to the throne

Tudor gathered his forces at Pembroke Castle in South Wales being reinforced by Irish, French and Breton troops from France under James Butler the Earl of Wiltshire who landed at Milford Haven close by. As with the mercenary troops that accompanied Margaret's army, unless they were well supplied they were prone to marauding the local countryside offending friends and foes alike and with Wales in a poor condition to provision an army in mid-winter Jasper felt compelled to march.

"Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?" The parhelion was observed by Edward's army on the morning of the 2nd February as the sun's rays reflected off early morning ice crystals in the air producing the visual effect of three suns. Edward made the best of it, choosing to interpret it as a sign of good fortune from the holy Trinity and adopting the sun motif as one of his badges.

Edward positioned himself at Gloucester, putting his army in a good position to keep a watch on the South West Lancastrians as well as those gathering in Wales and was kept well informed by local retainers of Tudor's march, north of the Brecon Beacons in late January 1461, thus enabling him to intercept them at Mortimer's Cross.

My pictures of the area are very much based on the interpretation of the battle as shown in the satellite view above.

Of course this could be entirely wrong as the sources for this battle are scanty indeed and perhaps with all the attention on the threat to London posed by Margaret's northern Lancastrian army the chroniclers of the time can be forgiven for giving Mortimer's Cross little attention.

The flag of York flutters proudly at the Blue Mantle Cottages, at the junction of the A4110 and the old Roman road, Hereford Lane, thought to be the centre of the Yorkist line at Mortimer's Cross. 

Aptly growing, an oak tree overhangs the view towards the high ground on the Yorkist right where perhaps Yorkist cavalry were placed in ambush. Close to this site once grew the mighty 'Battle Oak' said to have marked the centre of the battlefield.

Apparently the only source of any tactical information for the battle comes from two stanzas from Micheal Drayton's epic poem, 'The Miseries of Queen Margaret' published in 1627, which is not really much to go on!

Again, looking to the right-rear of the Yorkist Line, where March's battle is shown on the map above, the high-ground continues around and to the rear of the Yorkist position.

To quote the poem;

"The Earl of Ormond, an associate then
With this young Tudor, for the king that stood,
Came in the vanguard with his Irish men,
With darts and skains; those of the British (Welsh) blood
With shafts and gleaves them seconding again,
And as they fall, still make their paces good:
That it amaz'd the Marchers, to behold
Men so ill-armed upon their bows so bold.

Now the Welch and the Irish so their weapons wield,
As tho' themselves the conq'rors meant to call;
Then are the Marchers masters of the field,
With their brown bills the Welchmen so they maul;
Now th' one, now th' other, likely were to yield;
These likely to fly, then those were like to fall:
Until at length (as Fortune pleas'd to guide)

The conquest turned upon the Yorkists' side.

The darts describe the throwing spears and the 'skains' or scians, the long dirks carried by the Irish gallowglasses (gallo'glaigh). These mercenary heavy infantry wore mail coats over padded jackets and fought with two handed axes and large 'Claymore' style swords.

Looking out towards the River Lugg from the centre of the Yorkist line from the side of the A4110 

From the poems description, Ormonde's gallowglasses were the Lancastrian shock troops alongside the Welsh billmen, but seemed to have been poorly equipped to stand up to the arrow storm delivered by the Yorkist archers - "Men so ill-armed upon their bows so bold."

Looking to the rear of the Yorkist line towards Mortimer's Cross

As shown in the map view above it is possible that Herbert may have placed mounted light cavalry or hobilars in a re-entrant as seen in the pictures of the high ground to the left of the Yorkist line, but this would have only added slightly to the carnage of what would seem to have been a one-sided battle.

Looking along the A4110 towards the Lancastrian line and the River Lugg to the left of picture 

No notable Yorkists were killed and it seems likely that the Lancastian left under Ormonde and Wiltshire collapsed first and that in the retreat Owen Tudor made a last stand near the village of Kingsland on the modern A4110 to cover the retreat of his son and the rest of the army that was not pursued by Edward.

However he and other Lancastrian knights captured in the battle were shown no mercy after the death of Edward's father and younger brother at Wakefield, being taken back to Hereford and beheaded.

Looking out over the fields from the Lancastrian left flank where Wlitshire's battle is shown

In the wake of Mortimer's Cross, Queen Margaret and her army would find the gates to London barred to her and despite beating the Earl of Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans on the 17th February 1461, and recovering her husband, Henry VI who had been held captive by him, she was forced to fall back into the north after the news of Mortimers Cross and a growing resurgence of Yorkist forces.

Edward would join with Warwick and enter London on the 2nd March 1461, where he was crowned King Edward IV before heading north in pursuit of Queen Margaret and their eventual show down at Towton, a battle I covered in 2017.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2017/07/battle-of-towton-29th-march-1461.html

Looking out towards the River Lugg from the Lancastrian centre and right flank

Thank you to Mr Steve for a thoroughly enjoyable two days exploring the Welsh border and that concludes another historic walk with thoughts now turning to other parts of the country to explore in future trips.

However lots of things to come here on JJ's with Roman Legionaries and General Officers painted and based to show you, plus I am off to the Iberian Peninsula this month for an exciting three weeks exploring battlefields and am really looking forward to bringing details of our trip here on the blog.

More anon