Battle of Bicocca

[ravenflight]

Hi All,

Anyone ever won?

I just did. Amazing win actually. I just let the Swiss go do their thing and then picked up the pieces. The Swiss left broke through, but the right crumbled and then died in droves when I pounced on them.

I guess in this history Swiss dominance will remain

[TimW]

All that seems to happen when I try is the over-confident idiots with the long pointy things go off and get themselves killed before anything meaningful can be organised to get them out of the trap they've run into and I hit the army break point. I've yet to see them manage to get out of the ditch and into the Spanish lines. Good to know it is winnable as the French though.

[romainpek]

I just realized that the AI is cheating on Bicocca !
As if wasn't hard enough for the franco-Swiss to win against these well entrenched and numerous Imperials. I reloaded the battle just to catch the AI doing something impossible:
When the poor Swiss Keils finally get close to the enemy wall, the imperial arquebusier enjoy a single round of discharging their small arms at the swiss crossing the ditch. And then by magic they are moved behind the imperial pikemen that replace them on the first line to receive the swiss assault. So they fire and then move, interpenetrating the pikemen, something totally impossible to do for a player.

That's quite unfair I believe...

[TheGrayMouser]

I just realized that the AI is cheating on Bicocca !
As if wasn't hard enough for the franco-Swiss to win against these well entrenched and numerous Imperials. I reloaded the battle just to catch the AI doing something impossible:
When the poor Swiss Keils finally get close to the enemy wall, the imperial arquebusier enjoy a single round of discharging their small arms at the swiss crossing the ditch. And then by magic they are moved behind the imperial pikemen that replace them on the first line to receive the swiss assault. So they fire and then move, interpenetrating the pikemen, something totally impossible to do for a player.

That's quite unfair I believe...

Its scripted to portray what actually happened in the battle. If the light infantry simply stayed put, the swiss would massacre them and then fight the weaker pike whom wouldn't have the benefit of the trenches ditches etc.

[TimW]

Yes, I was a bit miffed by the magic Spanish teleporting pike trick the first time I saw it.

However, accounts of the battle do say that the Swiss were stuck in the ditch and shot down while any who tried to climb out were stopped by pikes in what seems to have been a pretty hotly fought melee even by 16th century standards. Trouble is, as far as I know, none of the accounts explain exactly how the Spanish arranged their pike and shot to make this happen. My personal best guess is that they possibly interleaved them so that there were a few files of shot, a few of pike and so on to provide mutual support within the fortification but considered that unwise in open battle where horse or a solid pike keil could get at them.

The trouble with allowing what happened in an unusual - maybe unique - case to be used at will is it often becomes "wargaming standard way" even though historically it wasn't. At Ceresole both sides placed a rank of firearms as the second rank of their pike keils with the result that there was wholesale slaughter of both front ranks at contact, Montluc, who claimed to have thought of the plan, described the entire front ranks of both sides falling in "wholesale slaughter". Then presumably the shot in the second rank got piked in turn. Despite it being a tactic that was used once, again I don't think it should be an option apart from the specific time it happened. Certainly it doesn't seem to have been tried again by anyone.

Me, I've tried Bicocca a few times and got pretty much nowhere. If I were Lautrec I think I'd have just left the Swiss to get on with it and hope to manouver or sting the hopefully now worn out Spanish out of their position late in the day or even first thing next morning when they were getting over their victory hangover but be prepared to retreat to save what's left of my army.

[TheGrayMouser]

If Im not mistaken, Lautrec pleaded with the swiss wait for him to bring up artillery and see what he could due vs the entrenched Imperialists. They refused and charged. The French army just sat and watched the show. If they wanted to make the scenario super realistic, the French troops would be fixed, leaving you nothing to do at all

[TimW]

Yes, that about sums it up. Lautrec must have been tearing his hair out.

It would be interesting if there was a second Bicocca scenario where the Swiss obey orders and wait while the rest of the army tries to create conditions where they could get at the Spanish to experiment with whether the French could have won given the chance to do things in the "modern" way even though Lautrec was minded not to give battle against the Spanish position but to strike at their lines of communication instead.