Slitherine

Had an odd situation in our game today. My shock cavalry had pursued up to a point where I ended parallel to a light cavalry unit. They were slightly behind my units front. They declared a flank charge and had to wheel 90 to contact me. A unit of lancers to my front also declared a charge on me. From what I saw in the rules you don't counter charge flank or rear charges, but when charged by multiple units counter charge the closest. The only unit I could counter charge was the lancers to my front. When we made the counter charge move the flank charge could no longer make contact as my counter charge took me out of their charge path by about 1 MU.
In the end the French cancelled their lancers charge and took the flank charge instead.
Just curious how others would rule about this situation.

imo there would be no counter charge and the defender would have to halt in position as per p33 of the rules "if a charge successfully contacts a flank or rear the unit contacted will immediately turn to face the attackers, unless also contacted on another face". Reading this literally suggests to me that this overrides the requirement for cavalry to counter charge (p30) when assaulted frontally, because in the situation you describe above your cav is not just being charged frontally. I can understand that you can read the result as being per your outcome above ie you move out of reach of the flank charge but that to me 'feels' like some form of evade has happened and shock cav can't do that. (it also just 'feels' wrong that you can avoid the flank charge this way). Only my opinion of course.