Bassano 2012 - Second game vs French Ordonnance
The second game I met another French Ordonnance, again with two French corps and a swiss ally. The swiss infantry center is quite popular in medieval armies here in Italy . This time I defended
My opponent set up two difficult hill to protect his army. He attacked by night. I deployed well back with a couple of pickets. The enemy army had a smaller swiss phalanx, with 4 RBdX in it. He had a large corps of poor quality infantry supported by 2 ArtO and mounted BwS in reserve. All RKnS were in a column in reserve. This army was of lesser quality than the first french ordonannce I met on the first game, but was more interesting from a tactical point of view. It had more tools, but was also more difficult to play.
In the opening stage of the game, French tried to outflank my right wing, keeping the mounted BwS nack as reserve. The terrain he placed was well suited to defence, but hampered his deployment and attack.
With the mounted BwS uncommitted, I kept IKnS in reserve, and attacked the infantry supporting the ArtO. The French seeing the determined attack by the English and gascon corps, changed his plan recalling the RKnS ti support the Swiss sent to engage my BdS. The BwS were finally sent around my left flank.
The Swiss blocked part of the gascon advance towards the artillery battery. The swiss BdX sallied from behind the phalanx to cover its flanks. In the meantime english BwS were hacking the francs archers. To speed up the attack I exposed the BdS flanks, suffering two hard flank attacks by the french IBwI and surviving.
The Swiss pikes pushed on and slowly had the flanks exposed, also because the BdS killed the halberdiers on their flank.
After some tough melee rounds, the Swiss corps was destroyed and the ME transmission broke a second french corps. 23-2 to navarrese
French did not used well the night attack because again the terrain limited too much the attack venues. The defensive system of the french was well thought, engage the enemy front and outflank it with a mobile mounted BwS column. The problem to execute it was lack of room. The KnS outflank was not a good idea, KnS are too slow, and better would be to use them to cover both PkS flanks and engage the english.