Holdenby House - July 2016 - Pike & Musket

For only my 4th time in my SK career and only the second time on the field of battle I took up the pike.  The last time on the field was in the late 1980’s at Oswestry, I think, and in the company of Rawdons.  How things have changed then it was all push, this weekend with Bagott’s point requires a bit more technique.  The training took about 2 minutes which was four times as long as last time, on the other hand this was only enough to get me on the field the rest was seat on my pants best guess.

Day One

The rest of Prince Maurice’s Dragoones held the left flank against the crowd line despite the awkward sloped footing of the sloping ground.
From my vantage point in the pike block it was nice to see Chris ignore the idiotic command to fire at will.  In the right place, OK, but there was just not enough space form a skirmish line of 3’s.  Instead he opted for firing by rank maintaining ground, smart move.  Unlike Rupert’s next to us who followed the order blindly.  It was chaos.  Not very talkative in the pike are they.  

Day Two

Back to normal day two, we had lost 3 musket from day one but with me back in the ranks the net loss was 2.This time on the far right of the Royalist line and after an initial attempt by our opponents to out flank us we managed to return the compliment.  At which point we received persistent and frequent attention from the Cavalry.  I think they were just glad of someone to play with, that and the fact we were in open ground.

Unfortunately, we were due to lose and were eventually routed, apparently we had fought to a gallant stand still and were out of powder (well almost).  John O and I gave them a couple of pot shots as we retired.  Just to let them know that Maurice’s were not entirely beaten.

Several of the pictures in this set were taken by Rusty Aldwinkle, and are used with permission.