Battle of Hereford 1067

In the last of my pre holiday games and in what seems like, but wasn’t intended as, a tour of all my historical gaming genres I decided it was time to see if I had enough figures to mount a reasonable full scale dark age battle. Through necessity this would likely need to be a Saxon vs Norman battle as that is the bulk of my figures. Anyway step up Eadric the Wild, living in and around Hereford and Shropshire like any good Anglo Saxon he wasn’t happy with William simply taking over and fought a series of raids and battles, around the welsh borders. He allied with the welsh which is even better so I could squeeze in some welsh type mercenaries. Surprisingly little seems to pop up on the Internet about this period, however, it appears he fought and lost a battle at or close to Hereford Castle in 1067 to William fitz Osbern, who the Duke had made Earl of Hereford. This was enough for me....

Eadric the Wild has amassed his Forces on a small rise close to a village on this, his left flank, is his only cavalry a contingent of mercenary welsh light cavalry, the rest of his ‘rebel’ army is a mix of infantry and small units of welsh skirmishers

Earl Osbern as befits his status has several units of the dreaded Norman heavy cavalry

Well armoured Infantry and a couple of small units of cross bowmen

Eadric is here to teach in invader a lesson so orders his army forward

Worryingly Norman heavy cavalry can be seen on the flank

On his left flank the welsh cavalry using hit and run tactics hold the cavalry back for a while

Annoyingly for Eadric the wood in the centre of the battlefield forces his attack line to break up slightly

The first unit of knights has been chased away but ominously a second unit is advancing to the charge

The battlelines have met in the centre, some unlucky morale rolls (seem to be a regular feature at the moment) mean a couple of key units fail to get stuck in for the Anglo-Saxons, but this central clash will be key to the outcome 

Good to see those Norman knight fleeing the battlefield 🙂

Eadric has stabilised his left flank but as the centre weakens he is forced to move troops across to support

Encouraged by Eadric himself the centre is holding

But then suddenly the centre unit collapses !

Another Saxon unit is pulled away from the left flank but it is holding just

As I guess one might expect the central part of the battle field turns into a massive melee but the Saxons are being overpowered and out flanked

Eventually the Saxons are trapped and surrounded their defeat is inevitable and the majority of  Eadric’s troops begin to run. Easric manahea to get away so will fight another day

Earl William inspects his newly conquered village, not sure how the residents would take their new overlord?

A splendid run out for the Dark ages collection, obviously I need to get the movement trays painted. We played with Kinhs of war which worked reasonably well, at the end of the day they are mainly men in armour/mail so there isn’t huge subtlety in the combat.