Early Renaissance battle.

 Well today's battle with John was a very tense affair between the French and the Spanish somewhere in deepest Sicily. We were using the Blackpowder Pike and Shot rules which allow a fun? game. John had expressed a wish to lead the French so I thought I would give my Spanish colunellas an outing. Well two of them anyway. The Colunellas consist of three units. Sword and buckler men, arquebusiers and quality pike. I opted for a lot of Italian light cavalry backed up by some Italian and Spanish heavy horse. I also chose a large sub command of mercenary landsnects       [ more of them later]

                                       
 The French in the early Italian Wars are very good, so in an effort to balance things I 'only' allowed John two Swiss pike blocks with sub units of crossbowmen. I attempted to make it more interesting by saddling him with three blocks of French pike and their supports. Naturally the French had their dreaded gendarmes and mounted archers with stradiots to do their dirty work.

 The French won the right to move first which was a blow as John had stacked his Swiss and cavalry on one wing facing just my Italian light cavalry and some heavy but indifferent Italian counterparts. Luckily whilst his cavalry advanced the Swiss failed to move which allowed me to move my Colunellas towards the main threat.

 The pesky Swiss, with bears attached were slow to move but were to make up for their indifference as the game progressed....

 Things began to unravel after several moves of the Spanish being able to manouvre into what I thought seemed like a good position facing the Swiss. There is no such thing as a good position when facing Swiss pike.

The French pike and crossbowmen that in theory should have been pretty useless. Somehow John was able to march them from his left flank where they had faced my best cavalry and the mercenary landsnects and into the centre to 'help' the Swiss. My best cavalry simply watched whilst the mercenary pike had a picnic.

A David and Goliath struggle, Spanish 'heavy cavalry' charging French gendarmes. Not the best idea although they did cause sufficient causalities before they disappeared off the table.

                                Of course the French can always call on more of the same.

 When in doubt, charge. My Spanish knights led by their commander attempted to halt the advance of the French centre by charging their pike. They nearly succeed against all the odds, but somehow the French pike held on. I think it was the double dice against cavalry that just might have swayed it. At least the Spanish commander survived.                                                                                                                                         

And then the Swiss charged.......

 Using Pike and Shot rules the Swiss quite rightly have an ability called 'ferocious charge' which allows any missed hits to be re rolled. My colunellas were shredded in two moves whilst the Swiss simply dusted themselves off..

 My only victory. I managed to get a unit of Italian mercenary mounted arqubusiers to shoot up a French heavy gun.

                                The Spanish camp followers decided to leave the field.

 For some odd reason the mercenaries were very reluctant to move during the battle and allowed the French infantry to march away. When they finally decided to take part the battle was already lost. So they simply marched away untouched!

 Did I lose? Obviously. Was it enjoyable? Absolutely. To be honest there was times when the French were under pressure, but when they have the best infantry in Europe they can always expect to at least grab a draw, or in my case a great victory.