Today we follow our war reporter as he rushed from the Libyan desert in 1941 to the Albanian coast in the 11th century. He arrived just in time to witness a slightly less-than-accurate refight of the Battle of Dyrrachium on October 18th 1080. Dyrrachium is now modern Durres in Albania, and very nice it is to. Excellent castle and Roman amphitheatre.
As he brushed up on his recent events, he heard that in the period post Manzikert in 1071, the Byzantine Empire had seen civil war and dynastic feuding. Following his overthrow by Nicephorus Botaniates, the exiled Emperor Michael VII travelled to Italy to find support for an attempt to restore him on the throne. Both Pope Gregory VII and the Norman Warlord Robert Guiscard had seen this this as a great opportunity for a “legitimate” land and power grab. Typical Norman opportunism. Memories of 1066 somewhere else??
So, the scene was set as Robert, his son Bohemond ( later a 1st Crusade leader ) and Amicus II of Molferra prepared to face the Byzantine General Alexius Comnenus and his commanders Pacurianus and Nicephorus Melissinus. Chris and Rob played the Byzantines, with Tony, Dave and Malcolm handling the Italo-Normans.
The forces arrayed themselves quite conventionally with infantry centres and cavalry-heavy wings. No-one was risking anything…
The Byzantines got off to a brisk start moving the entire army forward quite aggressively with march moves. There were dark mutterings from a certain Crusader with a southern hemisphere accent about Umpire bias as the Byzantines were his favourite army. Bias there was not, but I do like the Byzantines. Their method of handling regime change has always impressed me. Maybe a lesson learnt for the 21st century….
The crusaders responded in kind pushing their infantry centre and left wing cavalry forward, with the right wing seeming more reluctant. Was it some form of ruse on Tony’s part? On the Byzantine right the double-armed cavalry began to strike home and very soon an archer unit died. Archers can be good offensively but have little protection. That created a gap in the Crusader line that the byzantine cavalry quickly exploited.
On the Byzantine right the Crusaders closed for action and seemed to have the better of things when Knights killed cavalry. However the Byzantine lights maintained a frustrating defence preventing the Crusaders turning the flank.
The centre was very much an infantry slogging match but here the Byzantines had the advantage with 3-hit deep units plus “additional bow”.
Back on the flanks the Byzantines captured a camp plus managed to kill two more units of Knights, mainly thanks to poor saves in the face of archery, but the new “demoralisation” rule for adjacent units also helped.
The game was finally won for Alexius Comnenus when one of his cavalry units hit a disordered crossbow unit and routed them from the table.
As regards casualties is seemed a mighty Byzantine victory . However if the Normans had succeeded in turning their right flank into the Byzantine centre of “deep” units it may have been a different story….
As well as actual battle footage you can see the potential pre-battle catastrophe. Disaster….and maybe a hefty vet bill….. was narrowly averted.
Simon
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