Europe's Tragedy - A new history of the Thirty Years War

As readers will have probably worked out for themselves the 17th Century is one of my key areas of interest.  This came about almost by accident through a friends involvement in historical re-enacting with the Sealed Knot.  One day about 30 years ago he turned up at my door with a full set of musketeer's equipment and a set of period costume.  The rest as they say is history.  Mostly the history of the British Civil Wars.  As always happens trying to understand one period of history leads to a need to understand the events that lead up to it which took me into the development of tactics during the Thirty Years War.  Lets call it the TYW from here on in.


Recently I came across an offer on Amazon's kindle book pages I couldn't refuse. A free download of a recent (2009) history of the TYW. So I downloaded it.  Quite literally nothing ventured, but as it turned out quite a lot gained.  The book in question is Europe's Tragedy - a new history of the Thirty Years War by Peter H Wilson.  Sadly you will have to pay £9.99 for the Kindle version now, but if you want a good overall history that covers the military, political  and social aspects of the war and it's aftermath this book has everything you need.

From a war gamer's perspective it doesn't go into a lot of detail of the individual battles but it gives a good background as to why those battles were fought and the problems all sides had in keeping men in the field. That said most of the major battles do get a map and there is also a campaign map at the end of the book.  It also provides good background on some of the wars on the fringes of the TYW such as the War of the Mantuan Succession. 


The book starts with a look at the way the political and religious tensions built up within the Holy Roman Empire in the late 16th century.  It makes it clear that the Austrian Hapsburgs were prepared to allow a reasonable amount of religious freedom and that the war when it came wasn't a purely religious war.  The rulers of the various German states were instead manoeuvring for power one against the other within the confines of the Imperial system.


It then goes on to look at the various factions both religious. national and political and their interactions before turning to a chronological history of the war.  It ends with a look at the longer term impact of the war especially the economic consequences.


The kindle edition suffers from an inability to quickly jump back and forth in the text to look at maps or remind yourself of earlier events.  I found that downloading a decent map of the geography of central Europe in the early 17th century helped enormously as my modern geographic knowledge of the area wasn't of any help with the location of early modern central European states! That though is a minor criticism of what is other wise a decent introduction to a very complex subject.

The Battle of Whalley - designers notes

So far we have the details of the terrain and the troops.  In this post I want to look at how to make the game enjoyable without loosing sight of the historical background or deviating too far from the known facts.

The problem with this battle is that it didn't follow the expected script!  Parliament wouldn't win this fight under most sets of rules (including mine).  To try to make the historical outcome possible risks making the game unenjoyable for the Royalist player.  Lets be honest here this isn't a balanced scenario.  The scenario as designed is intended to produce a result similar to reality and pose both sides with the same decision points and problems their historical counterparts faced.

Lets start with the terrain.  The key features are the valley that Sabden Brook flows through.  The impact of this must be depicted as it slows the advancing Royalist scouting party.  In my rules it disrupts their formation too.  I would treat it as soft ground if that is what is required in your rules to create the disruption required.  Next are the stone walls that edge the road after the bridge.  These should give good defence against return fire from the Royalists once the ambush is sprung.  The woods along Sanden Brook should also stay as described.  The rest of the woods are conjectural so they could be reduced in size or effect if you feel they restrict Royalist options too much. One account talks about the Parliamentarian foot sniping at the Royalist main body from hedges so those could be added close the Whalley board edge.

Next are the troops.  It is just possible that Colonel Shuttleworth brought a small piece of artillery to the later stages of the battle.  The Discourse mentions that two or three shots were fired by the artillery "at the tower" the only tower would be that in Whalley and it is difficult to understand why the Royalists would bombard their own positions.  This could be used to justify giving Parliament a piece of artillery, but it isn't mentioned until the action in front of Whalley so it should arrive late in the game.

Alternative scenarios
1.  Derby strikes at once
All of the Royalist forces are free to act from the start.  Tyldesley isn't sent ahead to scout instead the entire force moves forward from Whalley at first light. There are no constraints on the Royalist orders.  Their objective is to exit units of horse and/or Dragons from the Read table edge within three hours of the game start and to have no effective Parliamentarian units left on the table ( effective means able to fight not necessarily routed or destroyed).  Parliament start with all of the listed units from the main scenario on the table at the start including one piece of artillery.  Their objective is to delay the Royalists from exiting the board in the time limit.

This should give a more balanced fight especially if Parliament deploy in a good defensive position.

2.  Shuttleworth pushes his luck
This scenario assumes that Shuttleworth is given a longer warning of Derby's approach and is able to assemble more troops by the end of 19 April.  Bolstered by these additional troops and fresh supplies of  powder and shot he pushes forward under cover of darkness to launch an attack on Derby early on 20 April.

Parliament has two full units of foot in place of the 400 commanded shot from the historical scenario.  These are of 600 men each 2:1 shot to pike, trained and experienced.  These represent the militia of the Blackburn Hundred under Shuttleworth and Starkie.  The Parliamentarian force includes the small gun discussed above.  They are deployed no further forward than one cavalry move towards Whalley from the centre line of the board.  Their objective is to destroy the Royalist force.  Derby starts with all of his forces deployed at Whalley as in optional scenario 1 but with Derby off table as in the historical scenario.  He can enter on a dice roll or on the turn after Parliamentarian forces are sighted by the Royalists.  Royalist forces cannot advance until Parliament's forces are sighted. The Royalists objective is to survive the day.

I haven't run the battle yet so I may revisit this topic with amendments or an after action report in the future.  In the mean time please comment if you have tried the scenarios especially about game balance issues v the historical outcome.  I hope you enjoy the scenario.

The battle of Whalley part 3 the troops.

The forces engaged at Whalley will never be fully known and numbers quoted in the sources vary enormously.  What is clear is that Parliament were outnumbered by a significant amount.  Sources vary between 10:1 to 4:1 in favour of the Royalists.  The Parliamentarians may have been short of powder and shot too.  Their Forces were not all on the field at the start as some appear to have been arriving from Padiham while others seem to have been preparing to retreat in the face of the Royalist numbers.  Only the shot seem to have been up for a fight and even then perhaps only because initially they were not facing the whole Royalist force.

On the other hand the Royalists main numbers lay in their clubmen who were inexperienced, untrained and according to some accounts only stayed in the field because there were mounted men behind then threatening them with swords and loaded pistols!  The initial encounter at Sabden Brook only included a small part of their forces as the main body was waiting at Whalley.  The Earl of Derby and his senior officers don't appear to have been with the main body, but further back in Whalley itself.

Lets start with the period accounts.  The battle was fought on 20 April 1643 numbers detailed from prior to that date may not have been available by the time of the battle.  As a result I am only going to look at information for around a month before that date.

Parliament Forces
The Discourse tells us that on the 19th Parliament's forces were dispersed and short of powder and shot. But that Colonel Shuttleworth sent out a call for them to assemble "with their best weapons".  By the early morning of 20th April Colonel Shuttleworth had been joined by Colonel Starkie at Padiham (about 4 miles to the east of Sabden Brook).  Some Captains, with their men, were sent to scout towards Whalley "as far as Read".  We know that this force included Musketeers as these were the men who insisted on standing to fight.

On hearing the ambush sprung many others "came up" so additional troops must have been in supporting distance.  This included a Lieutenant Marsden who seems to have encouraged the troops in hot pursuit of the fleeing Royalists.  The discourse glosses over the rest of fight implying that the main body of Royalists broke and ran when the fleeing men came down the hill to Whalley.  Although there are some clues that there must have been some fighting as a piece of artillery had time to fire three shots.

The true relation gives more detail of troops it claims that two troops of horse were at Dunkenhalgh Hall (at Clayton le Moors) which withdrew to Padiham on hearing of the Royalist advance.  The Parliamentarian forces at Padiham are described as "60 Horse, and some 400 foot, not above five hundred I am sure at the first". This account also includes "some few clubmen".  "At the first" suggests additional forces were coming in and this is supported by the statement that an additional 150 horse met them at Read Bank.  It also mentions a Captain Ashton as being present.

Lancashire Vale of Anchor states that Parliament's forces were 200 - 300 shot and 80 - 100 horse.  It goes on to tell us that initially there were only 100 shot at Read.

Broxup gives the numbers being 500 foot plus the horse as above.

All accounts suggest that Parliament scouted forward beyond Read towards Whaley but retired once the true size of Derby's forces became apparent.

Royalist Forces
The Discourse states that the Earl of Derby called his soldiers and Clubmen to Preston along with a piece of artillery and advanced up the line of the River Ribble.  By the 19th he appears to have reached Whalley.  Mr Tydesley (later Sir Thomas Tydesley) is sent to scout towards Padiham on the morning of the 20th.  This force included horse and some foot as it is reported that Parliament took prisoner "divers"... (meaning many)... "Foot Clubmen".

The True relation states that the Royalist force consisted of The Earl of Derby, Lord Molyneux, Sir Gilbert Hoghton and Colonel Tydesley and all the chief Catholics of the county, with "eleven  troops of Horse, 700 foot and infinite of clubmen, in all conceived to be 5,000".   It goes on to state that after the ambush at Sabden Brook Parliament took 40 prisoners, some horse and 60 muskets.  The capture of muskets suggest foot or dragoons as being present with Tydesley's scouting force.  If we assume an average strength of 50 per troop that gives 550 horse.

Broxup pulls together all of the sources available to him and tells us that on 13 March Derby had assembled 3,000 clubmen for the march against Lancaster.  so that gives some indication of the numbers that could be raised.  He also states that Tyldesley came from York with 600 foot armed 50:50 pike to shot.  This unit of foot may have been from Newcastle's army and have had some combat experience, but equally may have been freshly raised men.  Either way they don't seem to have fared any better than the rest of Derby's forces at Whalley.  All sources place Tyldesley with the Royalist advance scouting party

Suggested forces for the refight

Royalists
Advanced Scouting party
Thomas Tyldesley -average commander
1 unit of 150 Horse - experienced but untrained.
1 unit of 100 dragoons  - raw, trained

Main body
Commander in Chief-  The Earl of Derby. He should be brave but not effective as a commander. Starts off table - see special rules below.
Sir Gilbert Hoghton - average commander. Place as required with the main body
Lord Molyneux - average commander. Place as required with the main body

1 x 600 foot 50:50 pike to shot. Experienced and trained.
5 x 600 clubmen (improvised weapons including some muskets) inexperienced, untrained and unwilling (in my rules this means that they are the worst troops possible)
1 x of 150 horse experienced and trained
1 x 150 horse experienced and trained
1 x light gun (Robinette or similar size)

Special rules
The scouting party deploys along the road between the centre line of the long edge of the table and the turn to Ashterley. They must have orders to make a rapid advance along the Whalley to Read road.  Under my home brew rules orders have three components movement rate, target and action on reaching the target. The Dragoons may not dismount until attacked.  So Tyldesley would have orders of "fast advance, along the road to the far table edge, hold on arrival.

The main body must deploy north of the Calder in any formation desired but no further forward than level with the point where the R Calder exits the south of the table.  Split into two or three commands and assign to commanders (except Tyldesley) as required. Clubmen may be merged into larger bodies in an attempt to make them a more robust fighting force! The main body is under initial orders to hold and cannot take any action or change orders until attacked by Parliamentarian forces or Retreating troops from Read reach them.

The Earl of Derby starts off table at Whalley and only enters when

1. Retreating troops from Sabden Brook are sighted by the forces at Whalley.
2. After 1 hour game time on a di roll.  Roll 1D6 each turn on the first roll only a 1 will release him on the second a 1 or 2 on the third a 1- 3 until on turn 6 he automatically arrives.

On arrival he is placed on the road leading from Whalley to Read at the table edge.  He cannot move further on the turn of arrival.   He cannot issue any new orders until he is free to move.
3. Orders
Parliament
This is a more difficult deployment to arrive at as numbers are low and vary between the accounts.  To allow flexibility and prevent the Royalists having certainty as to where the initial ambush will be sprung, Parliament's shot are in hidden deployment. They may be in any of the woods on the Read side of Sabden Brook or behind the Stone walls that line the road after it crosses the brook.

Advance Party
1 x 400 Foot (shot only) experienced, trained and elite.
1 x 100 horse inexperienced, trained
1 x 150 horse inexperienced, trained.

Captain Ashherton - good commander
Captain F good commander

Deployed to the East of Sanden Brook.  The Horse must be within 1 full move of the East table edge deployed as one command under Captain Assherton.  Captain F commands the Shot.

Reserve
1 x 200 Clubmen inexperienced, untrained.

Colonel Shuttleworth commander in chief Average commander
Colonel Starkie average commander
Lt Marsden - average but rash commander

Speculative reserve troops
All we know for certain is that more troops came in.  These may have been the Clubmen and the second body of horse.  However, we know Shuttleworth called in all available troops, so additional men may have been available.  If we need to place more forces at Parliament's disposal I suggest the following.

1 x light artillery - experienced and trained
1 x 150 horse - experienced, untrained
1 x 200 Clubmen - inexperienced, untrained

Special rules
Reserve (and/or Speculative reserves) enter the table one hour after the ambush is first sprung.  The two Colonels arrive with the reserves.  Lt Marsden arrives 15 minutes after the ambush is sprung.  he can use his command abilities only to get Parliament troops to take aggressive action.

As an option you might want to enforce a limited number of shots for the ambush force.  The true telation suggests that they had little powder until they could loot from the routing Royalist scouting party.

In the last part I will post any last minute thoughts on the scenario and any additional suggestions for altenative versions of the refight.

The Battle of Whalley 1643 part 2

A couple of posts back I copied the text of a period account of the Battle of Whalley.  At the time I suggested that I would try putting a game together.  Well, I haven't had the game yet but I have created the scenario for it.

To create the scenario I needed to find some additional sources on the battle to try to fill out some extra background details.  Luckily, most of the original sources are available online or through Amazon now.  Not that there is much of it.  The main sources are "A discourse of the warr in Lancashire" which was the source of the description I posted before.  That is available through the Chetham Society via Amazon as a Kindle download.  Next are Tracts relating to Military Matters in Lancashire which forms vol 2 of the Chetham Miscellanies also found as a Kindle download.  Both of these are OCR scanned copies converted to text which does  create a number of errors but these are easy to spot as they usually come out as nonsense words or as symbols.

The tracts have two documents of note "A True Relation of a great and Wonderful Victory obtained by Captain Ashton and the Parliament's Forces against the Earl of Derby at Whalley in Lancashire" and "Lancashires Valley of Achor".  As Kindle downloads both the discourse and the tracts both cost around £5.00 which is good value even with the OCR issue.  The internet archive.org provided a copy of Broxup's Great Civil war in Lancashire as a free document.  Again there are some OCR scanning errors but overall it is legible.  As a bonus Broxup cites all of his source material which is useful.

I would like to read the Letters of the Countess of Derby and Henrietta Maria's Letter book as these have some references to other troop movements at the time of the battle.  Bull's Civil war in Lancashire is my next purchase as it draws on a Grattan's Lord Derby's Catholic Army which I don't have.

So what do we gain from the sources?  Details of the site of the battle are pretty clear The discourse places the initial contact as being at Read Head "above the house of Mr Nowell of Read"  Mr Nowell being Roger Nowell of Read Hall.  The Royalists were first sighted "mounting out of a hollow dingle betwixt Ashterly and Reed Head" (the discourse).  The bulk of the Royalist forces were drawn up in a body apparently on the North side of the Calder at Whalley (according to the Discourse) "in a bodie as to receive an enemie".  The Dingle is almost certainly the small steep sided cutting through which Sabden Brook runs and there is still a farm above the brook now called Easterly.  We are also told by the discourse that following the ambush Tydesley fled and mistook his way passing into the lane that leads to Ashterley and then down via Portfield to Whalley.  All of these locations can be identified on the modern OS map.  Parliaments musketeers were hidden behind the stone walls on either side of the highway between Whalley and Padiham.  This would have been Read Old Road as the current main road is an 18th century turnpike.

After the initial ambush there was a running fight from close to where Read Old Road crosses Sabden Brook at Read Old Bridge.  The ambush described in the Discourse occurred on the east side of the brook.  The pursuit followed down to the outskirts of Whalley where the rest of Derby's forces were drawn up.  This was presumably along (or close by) the line of the road down to Whalley.  At Whalley the pursuing musketeers fired upon Derby's forces from the hedges (a true relation) and his forces broke and ran. They crossed the Calder and headed back towards Ribchester turning and standing occasionally. This wasn't the volley and chase suggested by the Discourse but a four stage action.

1. Royalists scout towards Read and are ambushed.
2. The pursuit towards Whalley
3. The action at Whalley itself
4. The fighting withdrawal towards Ribchester

I propose to re-fight the first three stages in this scenario.

Setting the table up
Using 2mm figures and a 1mm to the yard/metre (the difference is notional at 2mm level) I will be using 4 boards 1220mm by 606 mm. as shown below this is enough to cover the ambush, the pursuit and the fight at Whalley.

General layout of the battle field with contours

The woods (The green areas) have been taken from the 18th century map of Lancashire held on Lancashire County Counsel's website.  There is no guarantee they existed in 1643 or were as large as shown if they did.  The woods along the bank of Sabden Brook were probably there and like now would have been a narrow band of scrubby open woodland.  I would depict all other woods as being fairly open as well, sufficient to screen sight lines and disrupt formations.  I haven't included any hill markers or contours as everyone seems to portray hills differently.  The key features are the valley through which Sabden Brook runs.  This is steep sided, narrow with a flat bottom and prone to being boggy.  It's about 100 yards wide at most and probably around 60 feet (say 20 meters) deep.  On the Read side of the Brook the ground climbs with the highest ground being towards the top right area of the map.  On the Whalley side of the map there is a plateau above Ashterley running back towards the large woods between the road junctions.  This is higher at the top of the map and drops towards the bottom.  Other wise the land trends downwards towards Whalley and the R Calder.  Take a look at the OS map for details.  Other terrain should be stone walls for the ambush on either side of the highway from the Bridge (at least on the Read side).  Possible some stone walls denoting the grounds of Read Hall.  And some hedges around Whalley.

Next post will provide details (such as we know) of the troops numbers, make up and morale states.