Battle of Saint Denys 2022

[Westbury]

After our successful refight of Dreux we decided to go for the next of the French Wars of Religion battles, the battle of Saint Denys, 10th November 1567, where 3,000 Huguenots took on 16,000 Royalist Catholics outside Paris and got a winning draw out of it!
By all logic the Protestants shouldn't have won but the constrained battlefield meant the Catholics attacked in a piecemeal fashion and some resolute charges by the Protestants disordered the Royalists and killed their commander.
In our refight we deployed the sides more or less as they were. The Huguenots had 3 units of cavalry within a vee formed on 3 villages, 1 at the rear and 1 either side, the side villages were lined with shot and the rear village defended by a pike & shot unit. The Royalists were deployed in a double line of 6 gendarme units interspersed with several pike & shot units, one of which was Swiss and another Paris militia - two ends of the skill spectrum!
Both sides had the option to commit their commanders to individual units as per the historical prototype and pleasingly they both did, acknowledging the risk.   

[Westbury]

The Royalist commander played a more tactical game than his historical prototype using his limited command points (our rules give a command skill to senior commanders which in turn gives the number of actions that can be undertaken) to carry out a protracted but more co-ordinated approach than history. The Huguenots, who had command points to spare stood still and waited.
The opening turns therefore was the Royalist artillery causing enough casualties for one opposing cavalry unit to seek shelter behind one of the villages but as time and movement went on the Royalist lead gendarmes were taking casualties from the hidden arquebusiers.

[Westbury]

Ultimately someone had to commit to action and the opportunity fell to the Huguenots who launched one of their units into the weakened gendarmes facing them; the melee was fierce but by a twist of fate the Royalist colonel was killed and the victorious protestants hurtled through their opponents and into the supporting gendarmes led by the commander himself. Another melee and another Royalist death only this time it was the commander, disaster!

[Westbury]

Essentially that was it; earlier we'd done an attack by the Paris militia on one of the villages which was a nice little distraction and the other village was being fired on by one of the other Royalist foot units as the Swiss prepared to go in but the death of the commander meant no more army points which meant no more movement 
We'd actually got quite a few turns in as the Royalist commander tried to best utilise his numbers but when the shock came it really came 
Interestingly both sides opted for the historical risk of senior commanders exercising unit command and again just like history the Royalist commander paid for it with his life.

[has.been]

More pretty battle pictures Ian, well done
(unless you were the catholic)

[Sparrow]

A really interesting, and fun, game! 👍

[MGH]

Excellent stuff!  And this time history repeated itself too.

[bluewillow]

great report and lovely collection of figures. i always tend to lose my generals in a similar manner!

cheers
matt

[TheDilfy]

Great AAR and two delightful forces  - thank you Ian for sharing!

[Captain Brown]

Nice work.

Lovely photos of figures in action.

Cheers,

CB