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Anniversaries for today :
Welcome to Clash of Steel!
Featured battle : Blore Heath
Part of War of the Roses
Date : 23 September 1459
Lord Audley with almost 10,000 Lancastrian troops confronted a Yorkist force of 3,000 men under Lord Salisbury. The Lancastrian attacks by both cavalry and infantry were replused with heavy losses. Lord Audley was killed, large numbers of Lancastrians deserted to the enemy, and defeat turned to disaster. As many as 2,000 Lancastrians were killed compared with 200 Yorkists.
Featured image :
A Parliamentarian Musketeer
A member of the Tower Hamlets Trayned Band showing how a Civil War musketeer would have been armed. He has a matchlock musket of the period, with a rest, and the match (a piece of slow-burning fuse used to light the priming powder which in turn ignited the main charge) held ready in his left hand, away from the breech. He wears a buff coat of stout leather as his only armour since mobility and flexiblity were of more use as a musketeer than metal cladding. Across this he had a set of powder charges for the musket, and on his other flank (not in picture) he would have a short sword for close up protection although often the butt of the musket itself would serve the purpose well.
Gallery updated : 2022-04-04 08:33:43
Featured review :
The Waterloo Archive. Volume II
Gareth Glover [Ed]
The second volume of this six volume series is a collection from German sources. Like the first vol. it is full of amazing, vivid first hand accounts which give insights into the many personal battles which made up Waterloo. These accounts are written by men of the King's German Legion, the Hanoverian and Nassau regiments and others. The translations manage to convey what I am sure were the facts and feeling of the original texts. The fog of war made real as 'We didn't see the enemy at all. We just loaded and fired at their musket smoke.' And the horror of the aftermath described 'the next day we marched passed a barn, outside was a huge pile of amputated limbs, some with uniforms still on. Inside the surgeons were still hard at work.'
Gareth Glover has brought together a mass of rare and previously unpublished work and presented it in a readily accessible form.
We cannot recommend it too highly.
Frontline Books, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2010
Reviewed : 2015-01-08 11:41:25
