College of Kings

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.