John Wright's Lauffelt pictures

Well over a year ago now, John Wright was kind enough to send me his photos of a trip he made to Belgium and to the battlefield of Lauffeldt, fought in 1747.

I intended to post them here, but got distracted by "real life" for a number of months.  When later I went to find them,   I couldn't find the folder anywhere on my computer.  Well, I finally came across them a few weeks ago when cleaning my gaming room; I'd put them on a CD-ROM and placed it in a binder of magazine articles on 18th C. wargaming for safe keeping.  Too safe, apparently.  At least finding the photos were a big reason in my deciding to get back to work on updating this blog!

My apologies to John if you are reading this, but here they are.  I have brightened up the photos on iPhoto, and I must say they are quite atmospheric.

Talk about cavalry country; no wonder Ligonier was able to shine while covering the retreat.  And while relatively flat ground, it is clear that there are rises and dips in the ground that could cover movement, especially when you consider that the whole field of battle would have been covered by a considerable amount of smoke from burnt powder.

Here is a contemporary map of the battlefield.

click to enlarge

John can be seen here standing next to the memorial for the Irish Brigade in French service.  The campaign in Flanders really was their finest hour.  Here is a close up of the inscription on the memorial.
 

One of the "joys" of researching this period is that names could be spelt in as many ways as there were people spelling them!  

It seems that the current spelling is "Lafelt".  Many accounts have it as "Lauffelt", "Laufeldt", or "Laffelt" or some such variation.  Likewise for the battle of Roucoux; I've seen "Roucou" "Rocoux" and even "Rocourt" in French sources.

Thanks again for sending these, John, and I'm glad to have them up at last!