Category: Italian Wars

Even though I am working on my modern game for Historicon 2024, I am still also working on Pavia for Historicon 2025. The terrain mats are something that I plan to have custom made, as I just do not have either the time or the space to make them myself. Also, I would prefer to work on the figures, buildings and other terrain rather than spend too much time on the mats. As custom mats are a long-lead item, I need to get them ordered.

Type of terrain mat.

For the Italian Wars games that I have previously put on at the club or conventions (Garigliano, Novaro, Bicocca and Ravenna), I have used the teddy bear fur mats by Killing Fields Terrain. These have served me very well and have even helped me win Best of Show and Best of Theme awards. However, for Pavia I want to use something different.

For my recent modern Afghanistan game I used a custom mat from Warsigil.com. I was very pleased with how this mat turned out. So much so, that I have ordered another custom mat for my modern Historicon game for 2024. The new mat should arrive in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have been working with Warsigil to produce mats for Pavia – I expect them to delivered by the end of the year.

The reason that I chose Warsigil is the high quality of their work. Also, the Battle of Pavia was severely influenced by both the terrain and the weather. There were extensive wooded areas and the ground was very wet and muddy. The last thing that I wanted was a lush, bright green terrain mat. Below is a picture of a wooded mat that Warsigil custom made for another customer. This surface is the type of thing that I am looking at for Pavia.

I will use the brown areas for the woods and the greenish areas for the grass of the park.

Design of terrain mats

At the moment I have ordered five mats, each of 4′ x 6′. These are intended to represent the park. Later I may order two additional mats to represent the walls of Pavia and the area around the Five Chapels.

Without going into too many details in this post, the five terrain mats will go in a “U” shaped design. The area between the two sides represents the course of the Vernovola stream as it proceeds through the southern end of the park. In this area it was impassable due to marshy ground on each side of the stream. Also there were raised roadways on each side of the stream, so firing was impossible from one side to the other. The only area where the Vernavola could be crossed was near Mirabello and further north. This meant that a “U” shape could be used, which would allow players to reach troops in the middle of the park. They would in effect be able to stand in the middle of the park.

The following is the image that I sent to Warsigil and the key below is my details that refer to the wooded Warsigil mat photo above.

The brown areas will be the wooded areas and the green areas will be the grass areas of the park. The stream at the top is the northern part of the Vernovola. Mirabello will be located at the southern part of the mat with the stream on.

This layout will give a lot of room for fighting, but have the constraints of both the wood and the stream.

Upcoming work on the terrain.

The next thing that I will need to consider is the large amount of deciduous trees with no foliage. The Battle was fought in February and I want this to be represented. I still have to figure out how to make these trees as they are not readily available on the market. I will keep on working on Pavia for Historicon 2025 despite still having a lot to do for Historicon 2024.

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This week the subject of my blog post is Pavia a project update. I have been working on both the park gates and the Spanish light Cavalry.

Park gates.

The only park gate that is somewhat intact is the gate at Certosa di Pavia. This gate is in the New park. I have not found much information about the design of the gates around the old park. I am going to assume that all of the gates, around both parks were of the same design. This assumption will have the added benefit that they will be easier to mass produce. As I am going to need six to eight gates for the old park, that is an important decision. Here are some images of the actual gate courtesy of Google Street View.

Making the park gates

I contacted a couple of terrain building manufacturers to see what was possible. However, I eventually came to the conclusion that I was going to have to scratch build these gates. Foam was selected as the base material. I decided to buy a decent foam cutter to make the job easier. I will also be building many of the five chapel churches and the Castle Mirabello. With all of these buildings the cutter should be a good investment.

Here is my second attempt at cutting some of the front facade of the gates. The first attempt is in the bin. The cut facades are sitting on the foam cutter. This is my first attempt to make a foam building. The process is interesting. Don’t be too critical of my first attempts.

Here is my first attempt to carve the brick and paint the walls. I still need to weather and dull down the brick. As you will notice the bricks are larger than those in the original. This is because the required skill level to make smaller bricks is beyond my current ability. With eight gates and fifty feet of wall, I think that the overall impression will be good. It is a compromise that I am prepared to make.

Over the coming weeks I plan to finish two or three gatehouses. There is still a lot of work to do, I need to make the sides, back, roof and details at the top and then glue everything together. I also plan to use some pigments to improve the bricks. They will be minus some wooden arched doors in the centre at the moment. The company “Things from the Basement” are selling me some custom doors. These will be made from laser cut wood and they will be bringing them to Historicon for me in July.

Spanish light cavalry

I had 32 Spanish Jinetes and for Pavia I need 62. Over the last few weeks I painted up the remainder. I still need to touch up the flag edges of the new figures, but other than that, they are done. The first picture shows the Jinetes and the second picture includes a few mounted arquebusiers in support.

These Jinetes complete the dedicated Spanish Light Cavalry command. I always love playing with Jinetes in the Pike and Shotte rules. They use the fire and evade rule, which works really well for them.

Hopefully next time I will have more work to show you on the gates. I also will have 60-70 Italian foot arquebusiers that I am working on. They are beautiful sculpts from SteelFist Miniatures. I am also expecting another 80 heavy cavalry in the post soon and I am looking forward to painting them. That is all for this blog post, Pavia a project update.

In some of the texts about the Battle of Pavia there is discussion about how the terrain influenced the battle. It is important in the recreation to understand the topography of Pavia.

Where are the hills?

Some of the battle descriptions talk about hills used as vantage points and troops taking protection in valleys from artillery fire. The writings of Colonel Hardy de Perini are particularly notable in this regard. The book that I have even has a map with contours showing the church of San Paulo on a hill dominating the centre of the park. To the new comer to the Battle of Pavia, this contoured map is convincing. The problem is that there is no actual hill in the park and San Paulo is not even in the park.

Without visiting the battlefield (which I have not done yet), how can I be so sure of the topography of Pavia? This is where Google Maps and their street view feature comes in. Google allows people to use these images on non commercial blogs as long as full credit is given. All of the pictures in this next section are thanks to Google Maps.

Photos of the terrain.

The above images together view almost every part of the battlefield. They give views from each side of the park looking into the park and views from the center of the park. One thing that is notable is that the park area is as flat as a snooker table (or a billiard table for our US friends).

What is also notable from the images is that both the park walls and many of the woods are no longer there. The flatness of the ground does make it easier to put together from a modeling perspective. I feel that these images have helped me get a feel of the topography of Pavia

What about the five chapels?

The Swiss mercenaries of the French were housed in the area known as the five Chapels. These Chapels were San Paolo, San Spirito and San Giacomo which were close to the walls of the park. San Pietro and San Lazzaro which were a little further out to the East of Pavia. I will probably only include the first three on the table as they have the most influence.

In looking at modern day photos of the area, I imagined that these five chapels were located in small villages. However, I found an excellent website which totally changed my views. I would encourage you to visit this website as the site has some images put together by the author. In respecting the intellectual property of the author I do not want to copy these images. However, there are some images of old art-work which I am free to use. Here are some interesting images of the San Paulo, San Spirito, San Giacomo area.

Images of the five chapels.

One thing that these images make clear is that the chapels were not surrounding by other buildings. They were almost like a monastery complex. Also it appears that San Paulo was on a small mound. So Perini, when he refers to San Paulo being on a hill, was not completely wrong. He just got the location and its role in the battle wrong. The rest of the terrain around the five chapels is also completely flat, just like the terrain inside the park.

This finding about the five chapels has changed my entire view on what role they took in the battle. I will now be re-reading many of the texts with this new understanding.

The roads from Pavia to Mirabello.

There are two roads from Pavia to the Mirabello area. One runs to the east of the Vernavola river and one runs to the west.

I have found quite a lot of information about the road to the East. Many accounts comment on this being a raised road, almost a dyke, to prevent flooding of the park to near Torre del Gallo. With such agreement between sources on this road, this is how I will model it.

The road to the West of the Vernavola is more complicated. There are accounts that say that this road was a huge tree lined avenue used for horse races. The road ran from Pavia to the Castello Mirabello. Other sources claim that this road was also partially raised to prevent flooding. I need to do more work on researching this road. The idea of a tree lined road does appeal to me as it will look good on the table.

Conclusion

Hopefully some of the information of the topography of Pavia will be useful to those trying to recreate this interesting battle.

I apologize that there are no pictures of figures in this post, but I wanted to get some of the information about the battlefield documented. I should have some photos of new Italian Wars figures to post soon.

I don’t like to claim that I am doing research on the Battle of Pavia 1525 as I am not going back to primary sources. However, I am doing a lot of reading about Pavia from various authors of different nationalities. In this post I hope to discuss how I plan to reconcile different accounts of the battle to create a table top event.

Books on Pavia

The following is a list of the main books that I am reading, I will list them in the order of importance to my recreation of the Battle:

• The Battle of Pavia, 24th February 1525 by Jean Giono. Translated from the French Le Desastre de Pavia.
• Da Marignano A Pavia. Le guerre italiane de Francesco 1 (1515-1525) by Luigi Casali and Marco Galandra (written in Italian)
• The Art of War in Italy 1494-1529. Taylor, F.L.
• History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. Sir Charles Oman
• The Italian Wars. Volume 3. Francis I and the Battle of Pavia 1525. Massimo Predonzani and Vincenzo Alberici
• French Military Campaigns 1214 to 1542. By Colonel Hardy de Perini. Translated by G.F.Nafziger.

Problems with the books on Pavia 1525.

I have six books that form the bulk of my reading on Pavia 1525. The problem is that they give six substantially different accounts of the Battle of Pavia. The summary of what they all agree on is essentially the French were surrounding Pavia, the Imperials arrived and got into the park, the French gendarmes were killed by arquebusiers, the French King was captured and the imperials won. Details of the battlefield, initial deployments, strengths, movements and combats all vary. To recreate the battle by reconciling these accounts is all but impossible.

Some of these inconsistencies come from interpreting some of the source documents differently and from some of the writers of the source documents only having a limited understanding of what was going on around them. Others come from poor research and accepting long held false views of the battle.

Some of the accounts just don’t make sense when I read them. I can’t reconcile what they say with the actual layout of the battlefield and basic military tactics. I have spent many hours trying to resolve the accounts and recreate the battle on a map.

How to resolve the inconsistencies.

I had a moment of inspiration the other night when I was trying to resolve what happened at Pavia 1525 so that I can recreate the battle as a war-game on the table top. The inspiration was that I am not trying to recreate exactly what happened. All I need to do is have a good estimate of the main elements of each force, their abilities and their locations at the start of the Battle. Then I need to have a good understanding of the constraints of both the battlefield and the weather.

If I have a good understanding of these items, then the players are free to move their troops and fight in any way that they want. They can create their own Battle of Pavia. I don’t need to understand exactly when and where each unit moved in the real battle. I am not forcing players to move in a pre-ordained way. This methodology is consistent with the way that I run all of my games. I never force players to act in a certain way; they are the commanders.

The constraints of the battlefield terrain

In a previous post I discussed the location and the type of woods in the park. These woods and how I represent them are key to the flow of the battle.

The next key item is the walls of the park and their limitations. I accept the premise that the gates in the wall were not sufficiently large enough to allow an entire army to pass through, a breach had to be made. There is some discussion of this being in the North wall between Due Porte and Porta Pescarina. Others suggest that it is in the East Wall between Torre del Gallo and Due Porte.

I was originally of the opinion that the breach must have been in the North Wall near Porta Pescarina due to the restrictions of the woods. However, if we believe this view, we must also explain how the troops got outside the park near Porta Pescarina. To get there they must have also breached the wall near Due Porte to get into Parco Nuovo to the north. Due Porte means two doors – one entered the Parco Vecchio to the South and one entered the Parco Nuovo to the North.

I did not show the wall extending North from Due Porte to surround the Parco Nuovo on the above map. This omission was because I did not think that this wall was relevant at the time. I now believe that it was very important. There is no mention of this second breach in any of the texts so I do not believe that there were two breaches.

Instead I believe that the main Imperial army breached the park wall somewhere close to Due Porte to avoid the problems with the woods nearer Torre del Gallo. I also believe that the light arquebusiers initially heading rapidly to Castello Mirabello probably passed through Due Porte into Parco Nuovo and then entered Parco Vecchio through Porta Pescarina. As these troops were fewer and lighter, they could have gone through the gates and not required the wall to be breached.

The other main constraint is the Vernavola. Due to the wet weather this river was not passible in the Southern half of the park except around Torretta where there was a raised road. The river was only again passible at Castello Mirabello due to a road bridge. It was also passible further north between Cascina Repentita and Porta Pescarina. The other item of note around the river was the raised road running along the East of the river from Pavia to San Genesio. This road allowed travel through the marsh area and also provided a barrier for protection against artillery. Other than this raised road the battlefield was essentially flat.

The Vernavola is important to the recreation of the Battle as it provides an impassible barrier between the troops deployed to the East and those deployed to the West. Once the French troops are committed to one side of the river, they cannot influence the battle on the other side of the river. This terrain feature is also important when considered with the morning fog. Different elements of the French army are out of communication with each other. This means in the recreation of the battle it is important to not allow them to communicate with each other if they are not in contact.

Constraints of the weather.

The weather also provides a number of constraints. In addition to the morning fog, the late winter weather was cold and wet. Not only does it influence movement through the woods and prevent crossing the river, but it also impacts the ability of the pike blocks and heavy cavalry. The ground was wet and muddy. This prevented the pike blocks getting a grip and being as effective as usual. For the heavy cavalry, while it would not prevent an initial charge, the ground would tire the horses and prevent multiple devastating charges.

The initial locations of troops at Pavia 1525.

As I mentioned, the initial locations of troops is going to be key in setting up the game. Once we have decided where the Imperial troops can enter the park, which I discussed above, the French troop starting locations are the main issue.

Now many of the sources agree where the Swiss, Landsknechts, Black Band and Light Cavalry were located. So none of these are too much of a problem. The main issue is where the King and the Gendarmes were located at the start of the Battle. Jean Giono believes that they were near the Cascina Repentita and others believe that they were further South. I will discuss the locations of both sides in the next post.

Conclusion on gaming Pavia 1525.

Deciding on the battlefield and weather constraints, as well as starting positions of the troops allows a game to be played without a full understanding of the actual movements of all units in the battle. With the diverse accounts of the battle, this may be the best that is possible. There is plenty of scope for different war-games to interpret the vast amount of information available very differently. As a result I expect many different representations of Pavia by war-gamers in 2025.

An update to the painting, I am working on about 100 arquebusiers (Landsknecht and Italian) and 30 Spanish Jinetes. These are all additional troops and will be added to my collection.

I recently made a post on “The Italian Wars War Wargaming” Facebook page about fork supported muskets at Pavia. Everyone was very polite, but various people suggested that muskets were not around in 1525. Various dates were suggested for the introduction of muskets including 1540s, 1550s and 1560s.

Not one to be deterred by the collective hive mind of the wargaming community, (especially after having discovered that the collective narrative for the Battle of Novara was completely wrong) I set out in search of more information.

1) Taylor – The Art of War in Italy.

My first reference is a favorite for War-gamers, Taylor – The Art of War in Italy, 1494-1529.

Page 50-51 “..from 1516 to 1521 the Spanish army added to the military value of the infantry firearm not only by adopting the new invention of the musket, but also studying carefully its tactical employment..  When the war began again the ascendancy of the Spanish arquebusiers and musketeers over the other nations soon became very marked ”.

This section seems to imply muskets being different to arquebuses.

Page 46.  “… the Spaniards brought into the field a larger and improved firearm which came to be called the musket.  It was six feet long and fired balls weighing two ounces.  Its weight necessitated the use of a forked rest., but its unwieldiness was compensated by its great killing power – its ability to bring down two cavalry men with one shot.  For a time this new weapon was classed as an arquebus, and it is therefore difficult to trace its rate of increase.  Occasionally it is referred to as a part of the artillery owing to it being transported by horses on the march”.

The references of these statements are the Memoirs of Du Bellay. Bk II page 189 

Rustow, Geschichte der Infanterie Vol 1 Bk III pg 221-5

Nardi, Isolerei della città di Firenze Bk V Chapter 35

I don’t have access to the primary sources used by Taylor. I am referencing them so that others can seek them out.

2) Jean Giorno, The Battle of Pavia

My second reference is Jean Giono, The Battle of Pavia, 24th February 1525. The reference comes from page 154 where he talks about the French Gendarmes.

“Now they are at grips with seven or eight thousand light fusiliers wheeling in among them from left and right, shooting at point blank range; they are also under fire from “forked arquebuses”, (the machine guns of those days), that have been set up in the second wood” .

There are some areas of the account of the Battle by Jean Giorno that I am skeptical about. However, his account of the Battle is one of the most complete that I have seen. He also uses a wide array of primary sources which he discusses in some detail. I am therefore inclined to believe his discussion about arquebuses and “forked arquebuses”. His account clearly differentiates the two weapons.

3) Paulo Giovio

I have seen some accounts on the internet about Paulo Giovio discussing the Spanish Infantry using a new kind of firearm at Pavia in 1525. It is reported that the new firearm was heavier than the arquebus and could sometimes kill two French men at arms with a single bullet. I do not have this text. I only reference it in case others wish to explore it in more detail.

What do we know about fork supported muskets at Pavia?

We see a couple of credible references to a firearm that is heavier and different to a standard arquebus being employed at Pavia. Both of these references discuss a fork to support the weapon. Taylor also discusses the ability of this weapon to cut down French Gendarmes despite their armor, and even go through two cavalry men. There is also reference to the weapon being six feet long.

Now to support the conclusion that there were forked muskets at Pavia, I would like some additional evidence. Ideally I would like some art pieces displaying the battle to show the forked musket being used. To date I have not found it displayed in any of the tapestries, wood cuts or paintings that I have looked at.

In the absence of the display of a fork supported musket at Pavia in the artwork, I turned to looking for an example of such a musket in a museum.

NRA firearm museum.

The NRA firearm museum has in it’s collection a Spanish musket that “was likely made circa 1530 in Madrid, Spain and was intended to be used with a forked rest”.

I spoke to the museum Director, he kindly allowed me to post pictures of this weapon on my blog. I thank him and the museum for this permission. He also agreed to go and measure the overall length of the musket and reported that it is 57.25 inches. This length is a little shorter than the six foot (72 inches) reported in the historical texts. This means that it may not be the exact type referred to in the texts, but nevertheless shows that forked muskets were present around the time of Pavia.

Now 1530 is not 1525, but it is very, very close. We now have a Spanish forked musket from 1530 that is 57.25 inches long. This weapon certainly supports the possibility that the Spanish used forked muskets at Pavia.

There are additional images at the NRA website at this link

Figures for the forked supported muskets at Pavia

For my recreation of the Battle, I am convinced of the presence of fork supported muskets at Pavia. I will be employing these weapons in my recreation of the Battle.

Now I haven’t found a figure that I like for these Spanish forked muskets at Pavia. I know that I would buy 50 figures if I could find some figures that I like. Otherwise, I may need to do some conversions.

One major 28mm figure manufacturer has said “I could see us adding one or two miniatures” when discussing these fork supported muskets at Pavia. So I have a question for the community. Would you consider buying these figures if they are introduced prior to the anniversary of Pavia? Let’s show that it would be worth it for a figure manufacturer to add these weapons to their range.

The last blog post on Pavia 1525 was my initial attempt to understand the rough scope of the project. I am now starting to research the battle a little more and as a result, my initial understanding may change. You will see in this post that there have been a number of changes and refinements in how I will approach the battle. Expect these type of details to continue to change for a while as I read more and discuss more with fellow hobbyists. Hence the title of this blog post: Pavia, this week’s thoughts.

Hopefully this evolution will show readers how I go about developing a large battle for a convention and will not be too confusing.

Books

I have purchased two books in the last two weeks. The first is “The Battle of Pavia, 24th February 1525”. This book is by Jean Giono a French Historian and was first published in 1963. The first English translation was published in 1965 and that is the copy I bought. The price was not cheap at $44 including shipping. I received this book in a few days and it is absolutely phenomenal. It has risen into my top three books on the Italian wars. The book has a whole chapter on the troop numbers and detailed movements (although no maps). It also gives a detailed description of the terrain. The Historian is very detailed on his use of primary sources. Unless better information comes to light, I will be using the account of the battle in this book as my main reference.

This book certainly replaces the recently published Helion book as my main source. I don’t want to be too critical of the Helion book, but the account of the battle in that book just never made much sense to me. There did not seem to be any tactical reasons for some of the troop movements that were described. In short, I just don’t believe the account of the battle in the Helion book.

The next book that I have purchased is an Italian book by Luigi Casali and Marco Galandra, “Da Marignano a Pavia. Le guerra Italiane di Francesco I (1515-1525)”. it will be a few weeks until this arrives as it is coming from Italy. It was $31.27, plus shipping, which was a little more expensive due to the international shipping. I am hopeful that this book will give a good account of the battle, but I will review it when it arrives.

Terrain.

One of the main things that I like about the book by Jean Giono is that it describes the terrain and its impact upon the battle. In particular it details the woods, marshes and boggy ground. There were four main woods, as shown in the map below. Wood 1 had very dense undergrowth making it very difficult to navigate. It consisted mainly of black poplar and elder. Wood 2 had drier ground and there was practically no undergrowth except for a few bushes. The trees were oaks, pines, sycamores, with poplars along the banks of the river. Wood 3 was also not too dense. Finally, wood 4 was similar to Wood 1 but the undergrowth was even thicker and the ground more marshy.

Wood 1 made the entry to the park along the East wall almost impossible and the breach in the park wall was made near Port Pescarina. This is my first problem with the Helion book account of the battle.

In future blog posts I will detail how I believe units were deployed and moved during the battle. For now, there are two addition points that I want to make on the terrain for gaming purposes:

1. The Battle of Pavia 1525 took place in February. Other than the few pines, most of the trees would be without leaves. To create an accurate visual spectacle, I need to take this into account when modeling these huge woods. I also need to differentiate between woods that are clear and those that have dense undergrowth. I want to do this differentiation with both the rules and the modeling. As we shall see in future blog posts, these terrain details significantly affected the course of the battle.
2. There were many areas that were marshy or boggy. Again I need to accurately represent them and consider how they affected the battle. If you have ever played rugby on a water logged ground and had to scrum in it, you will know it is very difficult to get a firm grip. This problem gets worse the longer the game goes on as the ground gets churned up. Now imagine this ground with 3000 heavily armored Gendarmes or a 2000 man armored pike block. The units are just not going to be able to get the same grip in a fight as they would on solid ground.

My sketch map of the Battle of Pavia 1525, showing the main woods and other key features.

Troops for the Battle of Pavia 1525.

My understanding of the troops involved in the Battle is evolving and everything is still not clear to me. Below is my latest understanding of Pavia 1525. What is starting to become clear is that the number of arquebusiers that I need is way above the number that I have had to paint for earlier battles. Garigliano had a very low number of arquebusiers. This number increased for the later battles of Ravenna and Bicocca as the Spanish manned the defenses. Pavia shows the change of tactics (particularly by the more forward thinking Spanish) and the number of Arquebusiers is immense – I will need to get painting and I already have a couple of orders placed. The changes during the Italian wars is one of the reasons that the period is so interesting.

The other item that I discovered this week was that the Spanish used some heavy 6′ arquebuses supported by forks. These fired a two ounce ball that could pass through two Gendarmes. There are several credible primary sources that support the use of these weapons. There does seem to be a belief amongst the wargaming community that weapons supported by a fork were not used until at least 1650. I just don’t believe this to be the case from the reading that I have done.

Never one to go along with the view of the masses, I will be deploying some of these heavy arquebuses on the Spanish side. I just need to figure out how to make them as there are no suitable figures. My ideas for making these figures is a subject for a future blog post. I do still believe that the majority of the arquebuses were the lighter ones, but I will have 20-30 of the heavier ones on the battlefield.

1) French troops for Pavia 1525.

• Light Cavalry commanded by Charles Tiercelin. There were 2000 men which at the 25:1 figure ratio means that I need 80 figures. About 700 were Albanians, so I can use the 32 Stradiots that I have. I have another 32 mounted shot figures which I will use to represent the light cavalry. This means that I will need about another 16 figures. I do have about 24 more unpainted mounted shot from SteelFist so I have enough figures for these. An 80 figure light cavalry command will make a great battle.
• Swiss Pike commanded by Florange. There are various estimates of the amount of Swiss in the command of Florange. 3,000 seems about right. I have seen mention of two blocks so that would give 1,500 in each block, so I could represent these by two blocks of 64 figures. I easily have enough troops for these blocks. There is also reference to 4 culverins.
• Infantry of the Duke of Alencon and the troops of Medici. This is one area where I need more information on the number of infantry. I have seen numbers as high as 10,000men or 400 figures. I suspect the final number is a little lower. I also need more details on the composition. I have 96 French Crossbow, 72 French pike and 96 Italian shot, so I have the basis of this force.
• Black Band Landsknechts. There were about 5,000 men or 200 figures. A pike block of 144 figures with around 50 arquebusiers in support would seem about right here. This keeps the arquebusiers are 25% of the total.
• Men at Arms. Reports state 1,200. The more I investigate, the more I believe that this number is lances and not men. When I view tapestries and paintings of the battle, the sheer number of mounted knights supports the theory that this is lances. Now the next issue is how many men are in a lance. I have seen arguments of as high as six or eight. I don’t think that is the question. The question for me is how many mounted fighting men were in a lance. I am not worried about dismounted squires and the like. I am happy to represent a lance by one Gendarme and two mounted knights (or Archers), giving three figures per lance. The 1200 lances would therefore be represented by 144 figures. I have a lot of mounted knights, but with the Spanish ones, I am suspecting that I need another 80-100 figures. 144 mounted French knights will be an impressive sight. They will all be SteelFist figures.
• Swiss at the Five Chapels. Again there is some discrepancies in the number but I estimate around 5,000. I am struggling as whether to use two 100 figure pike blocks or to use some units with halbards and swords for more close in fighting. Either way, I should have enough figures.
• Artillery – I will go into details on the amount and locations of the artillery in future.

Imperial troops for Pavia 1525

• Men at Arms. There are reports of 800, again I will assumes that these are lances, giving 2,400 men. This number will mean that I need 96 mounted armored figures.
• Landsknechts of Frundsburg and Mark Sith. There are reports of around 12,000 men which would be 480 figures. If we assume that 25% are shot this would mean 120 shot and 360 pike. I imagine having two pike blocks each with 166 pike and 30 shot. The remaining 60 shot would then be deployed as a separate group given to the Marquis del Vasto to seize the Castello Mirabello. I need to calculate how many more Landsknechts that I would need to paint, but it could be a fair number.
• Arquebusiers of the Marquis del Vasto. The battle description says there were 3,000 lightly equipped arquebusiers in this group that raced to the Castello Mirabello. They consisted of Spanish, Italian and German. This would be 120 figures.However, we need to remember that 60 of these have been contributed from the Landsknechts, so I need another 60 figures. I am currently painting these figures. It should be noted that these are not the heavy arquebusiers discussed earlier.
• Light Horse of Charles de Lanoy. There were 1,500 light horse or 60 figures. I have 32 Jinetes at the moment and have just ordered another 30.
• Spanish foot. I believe that there were around 6,000 additional Spanish foot but I need to confirm this number; this would mean 240 figures. I would represent this with 150 Spanish pike and sword which I already have, 120 arquebusiers (I have about 100) and about 30 heavy arquebusiers which I need to model.
• Garrison at Pavia under Antonio de Leyva. This garrison is about 9000 men which is composed of about 3,000 Spanish and 6,000 Landsknechts. There are also about 200 dismounted knights. I will represent these by 120 Spanish arquebusiers, 240 Landsknecht with a combination of sword, shot and halbards (I just don’t think that they would be pike) and 10 SteelFist dismounted knights. The majority of these figures would be new figures.

The Battle of Pavia 1525 – today’s conclusion.

I am starting to get more of a feel of the battle. Future posts will cover the unit locations and movements during the battle of Pavia 1525

The 500th anniversary of the 1525 battle of Pavia is coming up in 2025. Obviously I will need to put the Battle of Pavia 2025 on at a major convention to mark the anniversary. I had the pleasure of speaking to the Yarkshire Gamer last weekend and the subject came up. He mentioned that he is also planning to recreate the battle and implied that it was going to be the largest recreation of the battle ever done. Now I cannot let that go unchallenged. Now given his phenomenal painting rate, he may put on the largest battle, but it is my intention to make him work for it – just to keep him honest. There is nothing like a bit of friendly competition to encourage great things.

With that said, I have just started researching what I would need to do and get a sense of the scope of the project. I have a lot more research to do, but I thought that I would share some initial thoughts on how I might create this massive project.

The first thing that I need to decide is the figure scale. Given that there are somewhere between 25,000 to 30,000 troops on each side, for a total of 50,000 to 60,000 troops in total. I need a figure scale. At 25 to 1 that would give 2,000 to 2,400 figures on the table. Given my existing collection, I think that that amount is a manageable amount for me to achieve. Especially since I have other projects to do, like my Saxon Napoleonics.

What figures do I need.

Now looking at some of the key troops. On the French side there are:

• 1,200 men at arms (other sources suggest higher – which is fine with me as I have plenty of Gendarmes). This would require 48 figures or more.
• 2,000 light horse. This would require 80 figures. I have plenty of light horse for these units
• 6,000 Swiss. Sources that I have read so far indicate that they were in one smaller and one larger pike blocks. The Swiss would need 240 figures, which I could deploy in one 100 figure and one 144 figure pike block, which I already have.
• 5,000 Germans, or 200 figures. I need to research these numbers but I suspect up to about 25% may have been shot, and about 75% in the pike block. In which case I would need a Black Band pike block of 144 figures. Initially this number seems easy as I had a 196 Black Band pike block for my battle of Ravenna. However, we need to remember that the Spanish army also contains Landsknechts.
• 4000 Italians or 160 figures. I need to understand how many were shot, but shot figures are easy to paint and I am probably close.
  • 6,000 French or 240 figures. Again the issue is finding out how many are Pike and how many shot. I do have a lot of French crossbow, so again it should be fine.

On the Spanish side are:

• 12,000 Germans in two pike blocks of 6,000. These would require probably two pike blocks of 196 figures plus associated shot. With the Landsknecht pike needed for the French, I probably would need nearly 650 Landsknecht pike plus some shot. As I only have around 300 Landsknecht pike, they are going to be the largest figure time commitment.
• 5,000 Spanish or 200 figures. I have just enough here.
• 3,000 Italians or 120 figures. I still need to assess these.
• 800 men at arms or 32 figures. Again I have more than enough.
• 1,500 light horse or 60 figures. Again I should have enough.

It should be an impressive game if I can pull it off. The large pike blocks would be 2 of 196 figures, two of 144 figures, one of 100 figures. There will also be four Spanish units of around 60 figures each. There may be additional smaller Italian and French pike, but I need to research to confirm.

What terrain do I need.

The largest (by area) terrain feature that I need is the park and it’s walls. One interesting fact about the park is that the centre of the park contained the Vernavola river/stream. This river was surrounded by an impassable marsh and ran through the centre of the park. This terrain feature got me thinking; from a wargaming perspective it offers an interesting opportunity. I could potentially put the park on a 10′ x 16′ table. No-one would actually need to reach the river and marsh in the middle, so it could just work. If I could pull it off, it would be an impressive gaming surface.

The walls themselves, assuming I did the park on a 10′ x 16′ table, may need something like 45-50′ of walls and gates. I think that these would be easy to construct and will not be an issue. I need to research the walls and gates a little more, but the vision I have is to do them a realistic height. My guess from photos that I have seen is that they would be about 3-4″ high.

The two main features of the park are the woods and the Castle Mirabello. I would need to buy a lot of trees. Also I would plan to construct the Castle as a 2′ x 2′ or larger building to be the centre-piece of the park.

I would also need to make the rivers and marshes. There is a lot of scope for some artistic flair on these features.

In addition to the park, there is lots of potential for action around the city walls of Pavia. The French were camped on all four sides of the city. Fortunately I created the city walls for my recent battle of Ravenna. My aim would be to have a further 5′ x 16′ set of tables running as at “T” to the park. On these tables I would put the city.

My current thinking is that I would use these walls as the start of the city, but I may double up the size. In addition, the one thing that I would love to add to the city is the Castle Visconti in the centre. To construct this castle would be a huge undertaking but is an aspirational goal.

Next steps for the Battle of Pavia in 2025

I think that I have identified the broad scope of the project for the Battle of Pavia in 2025. The next step is some research. Luckily I have some time for this endeavor, but I need to make a plan.

Historicon 2022 was held at the Marriott in downtown Lancaster PA between the 20th and 24th July. On the Saturday I ran the Battle of Ravenna, once in the morning and once late afternoon/early evening. Each battle took four hours to play.

Running the battle at Historicon

We initially advertised the game in program for eight players. However, we managed to fit quite a few extras in and I think that we had about twelve players per session. The Battle was run with the much appreciated help of Pat, Lou and Bob from the Wargaming Association of Metropolitan Philadelphia. It takes a lot of support to keep a game of this size moving along efficiently.

The Battle of Ravenna game was run using the Pike and Shotte rules, which tend to work reasonably well in a large game in a convention setting. They give a flavor of the period and allow player unfamiliar with the rules to join in easily. To help I make easy to read unit sheets for each player – an example can be seen in the photo above.

I believe that the game had close to 1300 figures. The largest single unit was the Landsknecht pike block with 196 figures. There were also nine other pike blocks with 36 figures. These units were supported by huge amounts of Gendarmes, light cavalry, arquebusiers and artillery.

How the games unfolded.

Both of the games ended in a French victory (as in real life). However, the paths to victory were very different. The first game saw the Landsknechts race out to attack the defenses, only to get repulsed after a fierce struggle. This loss left the rest of the French forces to assault the defenses which had been depleted by units moving to protect against the Landsknechts. In the second game the French players were more cautious, with the French crossbow screening the Landsknechts from the massed war carts that were a feature of the battle. In the end, it was also the French center that again managed to beat the defenses.

In both games the light cavalry battle between the Jinetes and Stradiots on the French left flank was intense. In the second game the Jinetes managed to get behind the French position and attack the artillery and threaten other units.

Also in both games the heavy cavalry battles between the French Gendarmes and the Papal Knights on the French right flank was a more cautious affair than in real life. Both sides were hesitant to engage in both games.

The terrain

The Ravenna city and walls and the siege works around them were just a back-drop to the game. The actual Battle of Ravenna had relatively flat terrain with only Spanish field defenses. However, I do have plans to use these city walls for a different game in the future and I bought three discounted trebuchets from the Miniature Building Authority in the dealer hall.

Overall I was happy with how the city and city walls turned out. They took a while to both plan and build.

To prevent this post becoming too long, I will now just show some pictures from the Battle of Ravenna games. In a future post I will do the orders of battle that I used.

Photos of the battles