Siege of Liverpool 1644: The Game

 Last night I hosted the actual game, having talked about it for long enough. The draft rules worked pretty well - a few things need fixing, but we worked around most of the issues we came across.

Once again, my sincere thanks to the Jolly Broom Man for joining me on Zoom to play through another piece of historical tragedy. A very rewarding evening.

 

Royalist field artillery in action on the high ground near Everton

The build up to this siege has been sketched out in a previous post, so last night was all about getting on with it. Some sort of narrative should emerge from the photos; I'll briefly discuss rules matters later.

 

Things are very peaceful, before Prince Rupert's army arrives on the field. The end of the field nearest the camera is marshy - a no-go area

 

Two teams of sappers, relaxing in the grounds of the Castle before All Hell arrives

 

Rupert's besieging force arrives in the "safe area" outside the lines; he also had more troops available to assist in the event of a storm, but initially they were busy making gabions and cutting down trees. As you do...  The giant dice is to ensure that everyone can see the day's "digging number", which later had quite an impact when it became so high that the Royalist troops were struggling to complete building parts of the 2nd Parallel before the sun came up!

 

Sappers at work, zig-zagging their way towards the fortress - the brown felt strips work well, but don't look like hard cover, which is what they count as. The little stand of gabions is to remind us that they are not sitting ducks (and it is night time, after all)

 

An early trench raid - two companies of Meldrum's garrison troops, under cover of darkness, attack sappers on the job, and have brought some sappers of their own, to collapse the sap if the Royalist sappers are driven out. As I recall, this particular raid failed

 

We were using an Event Card system. To keep the number of events down to sensible levels, the active player had to roll a 5 or 6 on a D6 to draw a card. Sod's Law came into play very early; I had worked two historical events in as "Scenario Specials", and after only a few turns one came up...

 

... yes, it was a long shot, but Colonel Moore abandoned his fortress, leaving by boat during the night, which is exactly what he did back in 1644. The garrison suffered a loss of morale points, but passed the D6 roll required  to continue fighting without him

 

At this stage, the garrison's field guns were taking something of a hammering from the heavier Royalist pieces, and one of Martindale's first actions after taking over as Governor was to abandon the hornwork outside the North end of the town

 

Here Rupert gets his boys busy with the construction of a 2nd Parallel

 

 

The Royalists are digging forward from the East and the North

 

No immediate panic, but the garrison are beginning to run out of guns; since the port is still open to the river, there is no shortage of powder or ammunition, but guns are becoming a problem

 

Here is Rupert, accompanied by his famous magnetic dog, which for extra security is stuck on with BluTak for the day. Shortly after this photo, the Event Cards struck again, and announced that one of the Royalist senior officers had been killed - dice to identify which one. It was Rupert. I don't know what happened to the dog. Lord John Byron succeeded to the command, but it took a little while, during which the Royalists were unable to rally any of their damaged units

 

Mechanisms; markers; this shows that the Local Support rating for the townspeople (which can range from +3 to -3) is currently higher than you might expect, given the circumstances

Another trench raid; despite plentiful infantry support, the sappers were driven back on this occasion, and the garrison had cause to regret that they had not attached sappers of their own to the raid, who could have destroyed the forward sap. Oh well...

 

The sappers were soon back on the job

 

With the 2nd Parallel becoming better established, the Royalist guns started to concentrate on the earth wall. Here you see the stone damage chips accumulating, while Martindale has his own sappers working as fast as they can to repair the damage. This achieved very little against consolidated fire, and they were pulled back to safety

 

The Royalists' sole mortar, whose job was to drop shells into the town, to upset the civilians. There were a few misfires, none of them catastrophic. One of the rules which didn't work as intended was the starting of fires, and the management of existing fires in the town, so these chaps were less effective than they might have been. Next time, lads...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

With the besieging force sapping towards the walls, Martindale redeployed his men to defend the hornwork

 

 

...and this brought about the first "Tactical Rules" period of the game, as a hand-to-hand combat developed at the hornwork

 

 

The attackers duly captured the hornwork, with their accompanying sappers helping to achieve an escalade

 

 

The bombardment had now achieved sufficient damage (30 hits in this case) to offer a practicable breach

 

 

Extra units were sent forward from the lines to aid with an assault, and a switch to tactical rules was declared again. The defenders, given their shrinking morale total and the existence of a breach, duly laid down their arms and asked for quarter

 

 

Massed Royalist reinforcements, just to emphasise the point, wait for orders

 

 

In this game, the morale points count down towards zero; the garrison has the blue marker here. The scores are close, but there is no hope. If the Committee find Colonel Moore, there will be questions asked

A very quick mention of the rules. We did not use mining partly because Liverpool is built on a marsh, but mostly because those rules do not exist yet!

I have draft espionage rules, and this whole subject can offer a lot of entertainment to the game, but at present it is in danger of generating an industry which requires more extra work than it is worth. I am working on it.

Fires; I mentioned this earlier. I already know what to do to simplify this section and get it to work properly. I'm on it, gentlemen.

As you would expect, there were a number of procedural things we smoothed out as we went along. By and large, though such a game is, by its nature, unfamiliar, it was a fun evening - entertaining, but also educational. I'll do some more work and some behind-the-scenes testing on some rule tweaks, and organise another game pretty soon.

Good. If you are still reading, thanks for your interest. Bruce Quarrie once wrote that only a maniac would attempt to fight a siege on a tabletop. He may have been right - you can maybe form an opinion based on my account of this little game!

Siege of Liverpool 1644: Preamble - Quick Scenario Context

 My game of Prince Rupert's Siege of Liverpool is scheduled for tomorrow night. The event was chosen because it is a small siege, which is a good idea for rule-testing, the ECW gives relatively simple sieges, and I have an interest in the area.

Liverpool, in 1644, is a town of only about 1000 inhabitants, with fairly primitive port facilities, but it provides a very useful communication with Ireland. A year ago, Parliament seized the town and ejected the main Catholic families (notably Richard Molyneux, who promptly raised regiments of foot and horse, and went away to fight for the King), and it has subsequently been fortified by the addition of earth walls to protect the north side of the town, the remainder of the approaches being protected naturally by water. Sir John Moore of Bankhall is the Governor, and he has been provided with weapons and men to form a garrison. The town has a number of disgruntled Catholics and others with Royalist sympathies. In my rule system, the place has a Local Support rating of +1 on a scale of -3 to +3, which means they are marginally supportive of the garrison - this being largely helped by recent news of the Massacre of Bolton, at which Prince Rupert and the Earl of Derby allowed the murder of hundreds of civilians who had not been involved in the fighting. The town Mayor is Jacobus Williamson, who may be regarded as an additional officer for the garrison as long as the Local Support rating does not go negative.

 

Map of Liverpool shortly after the siege, with no reference to the works or the walls. The inlet from the river, The Pool, is clearly visible, protecting two sides of the town. At the time of the siege, bridges and ferries over the Pool were removed. The Castle is also visible, and this provided a citadel

 

This is generally regarded as the best view of the siege; it is known as "Mr Leland's Map", and seems to be a Victorian re-hash of a contemporary map, though details of the town itself show a lot of odd mistakes. It is interesting that the ditch around the mudwall may have been flooded from the river. [This will not be the case in my version!]

Rupert's Royalist army is large, and growing in both size and momentum. His mission in the Lancashire area is to capture the port of Liverpool and relieve the siege of Lathom House (near Ormskirk), and to raise more troops for a march to relieve York. His army is easily large enough to take Liverpool, which he describes as a "crows' nest", and he detaches his cavalry and much of the infantry to carry out his other work while the siege proceeds. For all his numerical advantages, Rupert has limited time to get the job done, since he is under pressure to get to York with the biggest force possible, and he also probably has some confidence concerns, since he was heavily criticised for casualties suffered in the capture of Bristol in July 1643.

Rupert arrives about 6th June 1644; the advance guard which seals off the landward approaches to the town is Richard Molyneux's regiment of horse! The main Royalist camp is set up on high ground towards Everton, and work starts on building batteries, and trenches are constructed on the hill overlooking the east side of the town. 

The town is not a formidable objective, but could be costly (some early assaults on the walls are repulsed bloodily and easily, so Rupert is forced to accept that formal bombardment will be necessary), and the town, apart from the natural water defences, cannot be cut off from the river, since Parliament controls the Mersey, thus supply of food and ammunition will not be a problem for the garrison. 

 

Hooptedoodle #464 - one small snag for mankind...

 The European nations football championship starts tomorrow night. It would be undignified to claim that I am excited, but I am certainly looking forward to watching some football on TV over the coming weeks.

One item from the necessary fans' toolkit which I am missing is a nice coloured magazine, giving details of the national teams and a match schedule. I'll skip the sticker album (do they still have those?), and I do have beer. Good.

So I got onto my dear friends at Amazon.co.uk, to order a magazine, and I found just the thing.

Slight bad news is the estimated delivery date is a long way into the future - the competition will be over by then.

Maybe if I had been better organised I might have ordered one earlier, but they didn't know the details of the team selections until a week or two ago. Hmmm. Not to worry - I think I'll just not bother with the online thing, and see if I can pick something up in the newsagent's. 

Old School. Ye cannae whack it.

Hooptedoodle #463 - Bonne Nuit à la Yé-yé Girl

 Memory of long ago - a gentler age?

I heard this morning of the death, at age 80, of Françoise Hardy, who was never a great singer, certainly wasn't much of an actress, but had a breathless, fragile quality which caused me some (respectful) stirrings in my teens.

This is naive, but charming, I think. Seems like yesterday.

 

 Thank you, Françoise.

 

Sieges: Casting and Further Tinkering

 Slowly heading towards the Siege of Liverpool sometime next week, today I've been smartening up the town a bit, and also doing some casting, as in "recruiting characters to take part". Still a lot of hand-polishing of rules needed, but then testing is the main point of the exercise.

What you see is what you get...

 

Uncomfortably posed photo of the Royalist forces. Rupert had a very big army, but much of it was detached to go and sort out Lathom House, and raise more troops for the march on York. This is the force which will take part in the siege, and even then half the infantry will be off-table, available only as extra forces to take part in an assault. Rupert has 2 Demi-cannons (24pdr siege guns), three field guns (approx 12pdrs, including two long-barrelled Demi-culverins) and one of my new Old Glory mortars. Note that regiments of foot appear in this game without their pikes, which means my first-aid team can probably stand down.

 

 

Gratuitous drone shot 

Prince Rupert (with dog) and Lord John Byron (with map) have a look at the state of things from up by the windmills on Everton Hill

Here's the remodelled town, with Rosworm's new earth walls, and the Parliament artillery already in position - that's five field guns - they have more emplacements than guns

 

Rosworm has also managed a nifty hornwork, not recorded in history, which looks OK, but it is worth remembering that the turf walls are 3 times as difficult as masonry to knock down with cannon-fire...

 

 

Sir John Moore, the town's Governor, has three units of musketeers available - these fellows are his own regiment, plus "volunteers" from his tenants, some Scottish chaps seconded to the garrison by the Parliamentarian big-wigs, and some lads ferried over from the Wirral to help out. For the nerds, I must point out that, though not exactly beautiful, these figures are handy for garrison duty since they are mounted on 3-figure stands, and can therefore perch on walls and ledges, and are well suited to take part in Trench Raids (of which you may well hear more). The figures themselves are of some interest, since these are from the early Les Higgins "subscription" series from the 1960s, which were gravity-cast and sold in small numbers. I believe I bought this lot from Harry Pearson - the painting is mostly his, with a clean-up and fresh varnish. Compliments, Harry.

 

And finally a quick squint in the box with the cast of extras - these chaps will variously take the roles of sappers, extra gunners, named officers and any other necessary odd-bods. Such has been the rush for recruitment that some of these still have name tags from last year's re-run of the Battle of Kilsyth - all will be sorted by next week.

Sieges: In Search of a Mud Wall

 This post is really just me mucking about, but I'm having fun.

Apart from being the 80th anniversary of D-Day, tomorrow is also the 380th anniversary of the Siege of Liverpool, so I thought I might see if I can put together a little siege game. Strictly speaking, Liverpool was attacked three times in two years, so I should be more specific and say that I am talking about Prince Rupert's siege, which was the second of the three.

I've been doing some reading about the event, which lasted only six days, and this evening I had a go at starting to put together a battlefield. Early days yet, and I had a great time fiddling about with the defences, but one obvious howler here is that my nice little medieval walls are not appropriate at all. 

 

First bash at setting up the siege. The wall should be replaced with something made of mud. You can see The Pool curving round the town, the River Mersey is off the far table edge and the land between the Pool and the camera is boggy. The Castle is in the correct place; Tithebarn Street and Dale Street head up from St Nicholas' church on the river's edge. That stone wall is pretty, but it will have to go.

After the Parliamentarians seized the town in 1643, they were very worried about being able to defend the place, and they hired one Herr Roswörm, an engineer who had, I think, already done a similar job for Manchester, to get the defences smartened up a bit. What is recorded as a mud wall was built around the northern side of the town, with an impressive ditch, 30 feet wide and 9 feet deep, which looks on the map as though it was capable of being flooded from the river. The other sides of the town were protected by the river and The Pool, which was an inlet used as a port area, and the land beyond the Pool was mostly marsh (and later became Toxteth Park).

A contemporary Royalist account describes the defence as a "sod wall", and describes how Rupert's big guns knocked lumps out of it into the ditch.

OK - I'm on it. We don't really know what the mud wall looked like, but it is an important aspect of the event, so I shall work on producing some kind of representation of such a wall for my proposed game. It would be useful if it were wide enough at the top to have some kind of firing step, and probably a few gun emplacements. I'll jazz the scenery up a bit as well - sieges are always fun to set out, though it is easy to lose whole afternoons of your life setting up vegetable gardens and suchlike. The soul of the railway modeller is still in there somewhere.

I shall report back in a few days when the town is shaping up. Tomorrow I shall pick out an OOB.