Bow & Blade: Lewes

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Just yesterday (March 12) I was browsing my podcast list in Spotify to see what was new amongst my favourites and I saw that in November last year the gents on the Bow & Blade podcast broadcasted on the battle of Lewes - see above link.

This was particularly gratifying for me as they did so in a  response from a request I had posted them some time ago and I received several mentions ... 'Greg from Australia'. I was quite surprised and chuffed.

If you don't do Spotify, the episode has been listed on the Medievalist website: Medievalist: Bow & Blade battle of Lewes and I won't repeat much of what they wrote. For those of you who might not be aware, the hosts are Professors Kelly DEVRIES and Michael LIVINGSTON.

Michael left and Kelly right

Whilst neither gentlemen profess to be 13th century specialists, they discussed the battle at some length and it prompted me to give some deeper consideration of Simon de Montfort's dispositions for battle at the top of the Downs. I won't get into that in this post and I won't paraphrase the professors' discussion on it but once again I realized I needed to appraise the battle from the perspective of cultural morays at the time - not simply from a purely tactical military view-point.

Much of their considerations were on why the Londoners were stationed on the left flank: was it a deliberate calculation or was their removal and the subsequent absence of the royal cavalry simply good fortune? Was it due to topography or was it due to an order of precedence from right flank to left based on seniority of a ward's commander?

Needless to say, I encourage you to follow the links and listen to it yourselves if you haven't done so already.

It makes me want to get stuck into my next unit and get this dormant project back underway. Alas, this is now set back another two years until my retirement. I am due to be posted to Papua New Guinea in the next week or so for my last mission and it seems unlikely I have room or time for figure painting or modelling.

I will; however, turn my attention to generating some original artwork to represent units and command cards for Hail Caesar in relation to Project Lewes. I will post them as I go. Rest assured that whilst this project is an extremely slow burn, I am determined to bring it to a conclusion - so much more to do and post into the future.

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