Friday, 3 July 2026

Battle of Barletta 1503 Valour and Fortitude AAR Great Italian Wars 57

 Des came over and we had a go at a battle from Peter Sides Renaissance battles, although it only seems to be in his book?



 Every where else its a siege and a challenge/tournament between 13 Italian men at arms and 13 French. Still it gave us a nice excuse to get a Spanish army and a French army out on the table. The Spanish defended and the Swiss came on in waves , the French Gendarmes destroyed the jinets and hit a landsknecht pike block in the flank and the Swiss chewed through everything else!











































































We didnt have any stats for Spanish jinets, which I think is an oversight and the barrier didnt favour the Spanish enough as the shot range has been reduced so the Spanish only got a closing fire/melee bonus which wasnt anyware near enough . The Swiss are also almost twice as good as the landsknechts which also seems a little excessive, not to Des of course and he was quite happy that his French Gendarmes were miles ahead of everyone else too, I think we should have had only one or two Gendarme units and the others as men at arms, but first go and all that, it was great fun and Valour and Fortitude worked well for the period, I just think we might come up with a few house rules to make it more historical, unless Im playing the French in which case Ill keep them as written! Only joking, theres a new, apparently the last version of Valour and Fortitude out at least on the facebook group and we have had an entertaing French versus Brits that Ill post in due course.

All the best 

Iain