Wargaming the War of the Roses

Well, for the first post of the new year I should do something about wargaming resolutions for the forthcoming year, but that will be the next post, later today. Today is all about the start of my effort to wargame the War of the Roses, and more particularly the Battle of Bosworth.

I've got no real answer why I want to wargame this battle. I live quite close to the field, about fifty miles away. However, there has been something about that I have always liked. To me, it's the end of the Medieval period and the beginning of the Tudor and the renaissance. It's an exciting time.

So, where do I begin to research this? How do I plan my forthcoming purchases, so that I can make my army as historically accurate as I possibly can? Whilst wargaming in later periods, such as Napoleonics, you can look up the orders of battle, but the older you go back, the harder it becomes.

So I turned to the first really useful piece of research I can find, the Osprey campaign book on the subject. Helpfully, the one on the battle of Bosworth even has an article on wargaming the battle. It informs me that Henry Tudor's forces numbered around 5000 men, consisting of a lot of French, Scottish and Welsh Mercenaries and a core of Knights, both mounted and on foot that were Henry's personal men.

To this end, I have got a rough idea of the Hail Caeser force that I'm going to build. It will consist of four divisions. A mounted division led by Henry himself. This will consist of three of four units, plus Henry on a command stand.

I will then have a division of foot knights, with a commander. Again, this division will be three of four units strong. The remaining two divisions will be the mercenaries. One will be the Welsh archers and the Scotts, the other will be the French mercenaries which will allow me to field some crossbows as well. I will pop a couple of cannons in these units.

In terms of purchasing, I will be getting my models from Perry Miniatures. They have all of the models I want, in plastic, and so it makes purchasings straight forward. It also allows me to purchase metal character models, and to keep my metal fix, allows me to purchase and field units of fully metal models.

There have been some archeological discoveries of canon balls at the battlefield. However, my research has not said yes or no if Henry had them or not. One or two wouldn't matter too much as they won't do that much damage on a table top.

I'm still reading through the Osprey book, however, and so there is more research to be done. However, in a desperate bid to get painting, I have started on my first unit. A unit of Mounted Men at Arms. I did a quick google search to see what livery Henry Tudor wore, and it came up with green and white. Pictures to follow of my first unit, once there
based.