Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Chris Damour]

I would like to elaborate on what Scott says below. In the early '90s
I did some fairly extensive research on this army. While I found numerous
accounts of the archers fighting mounted, virtually all of the accounts
were talking about very small "raiding" type skirmishes where there were
less than 100 men total (both sides). Please recall that field battles
were a very rare occurance during the 100 Years War and that the vast
majority of the fights were either seiges or small unit actions and raids
on supplies.
I was only able to find two accounts of actual "battles" similar in
scope to what is being depicted by Warrior where they fought mounted. In
one they charged Swiss pike to cover the retreat of some French foot troops
(this action was described as "glorious but ultimately futile", loosely
translated). In the other account they charged accross a stream, up into
earthworks defended with stakes and routed the English longbowmen that were
defending this field fortification. From the information that I had, I was
not able to make a determination about how many mounted archers or
longbowmen were involved. Quite frankly, I find it difficult to believe
that there were all that many longbowmen if they could not stop the mounted
archers given the apparant strength of the defenses.
Much as I hate to say it, since I definately liked the HK mounted
archers in the old grey book, I think that Scott has accurately portrayed
their battlefield role in the list. Now when Jon gets around to
Swordclash...

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 06:54:23 -0600, "Holder, Scott"
<Scott.Holder@...> wrote :
Thanks for the suggestion. I very respectfully don't agree with it,
however. I approached these troops "from the ground up" as opposed
to "from the horse down". My reading of the ordonnances, as well as others
(Phil, Perry Grey of Medieval Warfare) indicates that how they are
currently portrayed in FeudWar fits how they operated. Phil takes the
Ordonnance Bowmen more to an extreme in terms of total abandonment of being
ground troops, both Perry and myself allow that as an option since its very
clear that the ordonnance dictated "X" number of archers and if some
transmogrified into some type of cavalry, the underlying policy structure
remained, hence why I don't mandate some type of mounting. Furthermore,
any ordonnance mounted that had a battlefield role of strike, etc., is
covered by the existing Ordonnance Gendarmes and Coustillier downgrade.
It's very clear that these guys, even if mounted, never came close to
being "knights", that wasn't their basic role and as such, they
were "ranked" accordingly (HC upgrade as an option). The JLS option for
some reflects a very limited number of light spears or javelins (ala the
Coustilliers) given to these folks but nothing as widespread as to warrant
a 0-1/2 upgrade. Bottom line is that French armies of this period derived
their force structure from the 1445 ordonnances and those dictated archers
as depicted in the Ordonnance Bowmen. Said bowmen were often mounted, some
to the degree that they approached true cavalry as opposed to mounted
infantry. That was more of a happenstance occurance and there is nothing
to indicate that the force structure dictated by the ordonannces
significantly changed during the life of this list.
>
> >Now back to Classical Warrior:)
>
> scott

--
Christopher Damour

[joncleaves]

<<Now when Jon gets around to
Swordclash...>>

Oh, and I will - and you'll be able to do exactly this type of
fight. Actually you can now....

SC stays on simmer in the background and my daughter is quite the
playtester... Once clear of Warrior Battles, this will be a bigger
deal. I'd like to demo an attack by Gauls on a Roman squad camping
next year...

J