De Slag om Grolle

[Benno]

This battle will be taking place over the weekend of 23rd, 24th and 25th October, in Groenlo, in Gelderland, Holland.

It commemorates the 1627 battle between the Imperial/Spanish forces and the United Provinces troops who liberated the town. The town will be decorated to resemble the 17th town, hundreds of re-enactors from all over Europe will attend, Russians, French, German, Dutch and many Brits are travelling there.
There will be a full sized artillery bastion, and trenches that will advance day by day towards the town as well as some pretty spectacular (and probably certifiably insane) Czech cavalry.

The weekend is also being used to mark the 400th anniversary of the first brewing of Grolsch beer. They're marking the event with a special brew exclusively avaialable in Groenlo.

Great photo opportunities and good beer.

[Emperor]

Well post some pictures and videos...I want to see the redoubt in action...

[steve_pickstock]

These are from 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDzn63HfBTA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6nDD9v--Pc

And these are the local guys building the redoubt/battery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gKkp1rBDJw

But trust me on this - you have to see these things for real if you can.

[Emperor]

You know 5 km from my house, on one hill there was a battle famous in history of my country...There was a big sconce...Sconce is similar to redoubt, only it has beside earth battlement a fence of palisade as defense...The sconce was built in 1806, and it was intact between 1848 when it was last time inspected, and now there is no clue of it...One thing that I want to ask you is ,,how do you rebuild old earth forts like redoubts back as it was and in places where it was...I mean I red and watched it that they make archeological digging until they find a place where earth is different since digging disrupt earth, but I don't know anything about it, and there has been talk about rebuilding it since before my birth in 1987...'' I saw Russians rebuild one of ten Poltava redoubts that were in formation of letter T...

[Emperor]

Yeah I want to make one my self at my home town, about the battle that was there...

[steve_pickstock]

How do you rebuild a sconce? Now there is a question.

There are so many ways the best thing is do the reading and see what works for you and what is accurate for where you are. The techniques that were used originally - palisades, gabions, etc - they're all valid. T%he good news is once you get it all sorted you can usen a digger to do all the hard work.

[Benno]

I'm going to attend the event (it's only 40 minutes away from Almelo). I was there too a couple of years ago. My friends actually live in Groenlo (Grolle is the old name for Groenlo). One of them fires the big cannon of Grolle. They were quite busy digging out the redoubts for the past few months.

He's the guy on the left


A picture of the city:


My friend said 1400 reenactors from 14 countries will attend!

[steve_pickstock]

I shall be at Te Kroon in Notenboomstraat, a lot of the weekend, if you want to stop by.

[Benno]

I shall be at Te Kroon in Notenboomstraat, a lot of the weekend, if you want to stop by.

Great! I'll try to drop by and say hi.

Here's the official promo video btw

[Emperor]

@Steve the problem is to determin where exactly the sconce was...Here I have a drawing made by Czech officer when he visited sconce some 42 years after the battle...
It was in shape of square with one unusual longer side, the north one 150 to 160 feet long, with 4 canon bastions and one of those bastions was a redan... It could have crew up to 7 thousand men, how much numbered rebel infantry forces, against 40 thousand Turkish Imperial soldiers...
I did 3D model sketch here how it should look
The sconce was on top of a hill some 600 feet from edge of cliff...The hills cliff was in high of second or third floor of ordinary house and it had wide and flat field on top...
The Turkish Imperial guns was positioned under the hill...The funny thing is the rebels won...They hand beside 7 thousand infantrymen, some 2 thousand cavalrymen which they hid in wood away from battlefield, which charged at Turkish Imperial army and their cannons in moment they didn't expect...

[steve_pickstock]

Great! I'll try to drop by and say hi.

Here's the official promo video btw

The man at 24 and 34 seconds - shouting with the greying beard - is my dear friend Thornton, who is also my brigade commander. He also leads our contingent to Grolle.

[steve_pickstock]

@Steve the problem is to determin where exactly the sconce was...Here I have a drawing made by Czech officer when he visited sconce some 42 years after the battle...
It was in shape of square with one unusual longer side, the north one 150 to 160 feet long, with 4 canon bastions and one of those bastions was a redan... It could have crew up to 7 thousand men, how much numbered rebel infantry forces, against 40 thousand Turkish Imperial soldiers...
I did 3D model sketch here how it should look
The sconce was on top of a hill some 600 feet from edge of cliff...The hills cliff was in high of second or third floor of ordinary house and it had wide and flat field on top...
The Turkish Imperial guns was positioned under the hill...The funny thing is the rebels won...They hand beside 7 thousand infantrymen, some 2 thousand cavalrymen which they hid in wood away from battlefield, which charged at Turkish Imperial army and their cannons in moment they didn't expect...

At least if you get a chance it's a nice size to build. And even a low rampart like that can be a great force multiplier. Not only have you got cover and that is a huge factor in itself. But it can be difficult to bring enough force to bear on the defenders to force them back, especially if there are guns to fire en filade across your advance and there are stakes to get past.

[Emperor]

Well as it is written a sconce is filed fort made of earth of high profile, and it is a defensive weapon...They learned to build them in Austrian freikorps or freikor where some of them served as officer during Frontier Rebelion...Since hill was near river Sava it was on frontier of Austrian empire...Turks send message to people across river to come and watch the battle...Austrian officers raised a watch post on both banks, so they could inform about the battles...
Funny thing is that in every battle there was at least one sconce...There are many of them that survived the time, but small amount of those that survived was in major battles...One of them is in local village...It is in form of square...He is covered by tall grass, but it would be wise to buy the place from peasant and make it as tourist attraction...
There also was one fortress with great complexity called Deligrad or hero town, it was a complex of sconces made in shape of triangle...In that place there are still some palisade left...Here is photo...

Now here is illustration how usually battles would look like...


Now concerning size, it is an old measurment, not the English foot, but local foot measurment...It is said that it has between 1 and 2 meters, not sure how much, something about 165 cmm, now maybe I am telling stupid things, but in literature it is said that that sconce had sides of 280 meters and 300 meters(this last was the bigger north side)...Now some things are not clear to me...When they describe the battle, they say Turkish guns were placed on right bank of small river...I went and visited whole place, that river or at least what was left from it is from cliff of hill away some 2 to 5 km...Napoleonic cannons fired for 500 meters plus minus as I heard...

[steve_pickstock]

Well as it is written a sconce is filed fort made of earth of high profile, and it is a defensive weapon...They learned to build them in Austrian freikorps or freikor where some of them served as officer during Frontier Rebelion...Since hill was near river Sava it was on frontier of Austrian empire...Turks send message to people across river to come and watch the battle...Austrian officers raised a watch post on both banks, so they could inform about the battles...
Funny thing is that in every battle there was at least one sconce...There are many of them that survived the time, but small amount of those that survived was in major battles...One of them is in local village...It is in form of square...He is covered by tall grass, but it would be wise to buy the place from peasant and make it as tourist attraction...
There also was one fortress with great complexity called Deligrad or hero town, it was a complex of sconces made in shape of triangle...In that place there are still some palisade left...Here is photo...

Sconses - and other styles of earthwotks - horn works, and bastions etc - date back at least to the 16th century and probably earlier. The biggest existing sconse in Britain - I think - is the Queen's Sconse at Newark in Nottoinghamshire. It's huge, but whether it would house 7,000 men I don't know, however with the ditch in front and the size of the rampart it would be a tough nut to crack by assault. Earthworks are easy - especially when you have a handy supply of man-power who otherwise would sitting round doing nothing.

Now concerning size, it is an old measurment, not the English foot, but local foot measurment...It is said that it has between 1 and 2 meters, not sure how much, something about 165 cmm, now maybe I am telling stupid things, but in literature it is said that that sconce had sides of 280 meters and 300 meters(this last was the bigger north side)...Now some things are not clear to me...When they describe the battle, they say Turkish guns were placed on right bank of small river...I went and visited whole place, that river or at least what was left from it is from cliff of hill away some 2 to 5 km...Napoleonic cannons fired for 500 meters plus minus as I heard...

Was it the toise? That was a French unit of measurement and Vauban based all of his fortifications on it. A Toise was exactly 6 pieds (feet) (about 1.949 metres). There was also a cubic toise to measure the volume of earth shifted.

[Emperor]

Yeah I know about history of redoubts it date long ago...
Well I think it was not toise, since they all were under Turks quite long time, so they didn't had contact with other nations beside Austrian and Russians...
Now as concerning sconce here is the clip of one sconce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4DvDbe91PU
It is on some smaller hill and it has diorama in museum, not profesionally made but whatever...


As concerning Queen sconce I know about it, I say a diorama of it on net, here it is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgcaeqBe1eg
It is quite nice diorama...
Now concerning this my sconce they made this small section
It is not quite as it was, since palisade should be facing up to the sky not under the angle...
I made a little vignette out of fun...
I used figure Kekso sent me...

[steve_pickstock]

Well that was a wonderfull week-end. The people of Groenlo were very warm and welcoming and we had a lot of fun. The street where we were staying had been 'done up' to represent Notenboom Straat at the time of the battle. A lot of the town was decorated too.
On Saturday - er it may have been Sunday - it all starts to run together - I met Benno and Dad's Army, and a lovely young lady.
I didn't fight this year due to a bad back, but I did see alot of the town and if you googke Slag om Grolle 2015 you'll find so much.

[Dad's Army]

It sur was nice to meet this "nutter" Steve!

Here is our proof:

Hello from de slag om Grolle (1627): Remco (Dad's Army) # Benno # Steve Pickstock

But I must say, Steve looks better in these kind of pictures:



It was a great day for us, and nice to meet you in real live Steve!!!
You are a lucky man to be there all 3 days!!

Here 3 pics of the battle, lots more of them on the internet...
I don't have much time to upload them all





even there wher horses in the battle:



The website of the event: http://www.slagomgrolle.nl/en/
The facebook of the event: https://www.facebook.com/SlagomGrolle/

[MABO]

Nice family picture, , thanks for sharing! Must have been an interesting event.