Action on the Coa - 24th July 1810 - Prep

With luck - broadband and domestic problems permitting - we should have our first Zoom-based video-conference wargame at the end of this week - probably Friday. We've chosen a Commands & Colors game, because the gridded table should be easy to work with, a small action, for obvious reasons, we'll use the house's Ramekin activation system in place of the Command Cards, because it simplifies things, the host will be the umpire and will do all the running around.

Sounds fine - as umpire and host, I am packing in the vitamins and the glucose drinks, in preparation.

I have set up the table - my esteemed colleagues will help decide what tweaking we need, then I'll probably put the figures out of the way until Friday. I thought I'd give a preliminary view here of what I've done so far. The scenario is not the one from the C&CN book - though obviously it has historical similarities. The whole thing will look better when the chairs are cleared out of the way and I've tidied up a bit for the (virtual) TV crew. Oh yes - I emphasise that this is a provisional set-up - we may adjust the OOBs and the starting positions before the game.

Battlefield from the southern corner, French to our right in this view.

The French, from their left flank. These are the troops Ney has sent forward to deal with Crawfurd. Loison, the division commander, has the white border; from this end, you see Ferey's brigade, then the 15e Chasseurs à Cheval, then Simon's brigade, then more cavalry. They also have 1 field battery, 1 horse battery and a small unit of élite voltigeurs - the Chasseurs de Siège - hand-picked from the whole of VI Corps.

And here are the Allies, from their right. Crawfurd is on the hill opposite, with the white border to his base, staring in dismay at the baggage train which he somehow has to evacuate over the bridge. From this end, you see Col Beckwith's brigade, Col Barclay's brigade, then George Anson's cavalry and Ross's Troop, RHA. At the far end you can see the south-west corner of the fortress of Almeida - there are some more troops in there.

And now the whole table from the other end - French on the left here (the 3eme Hussards look a bit close to the Rifles and the RHA, so that may be an early tweak). The supporting cavalry just coming onto the field on the road from Vale da Mula are Gardanne's dragoon brigade.

The French from their right - you get the idea...

...and now the Allies from their left - this is more interesting - there are Portuguese guns in the fort, which can fire on the French right wing (just about) - there are also Portuguese infantry in the fortress. We probably won't see them - they can't be fired on if they don't climb up on the walls or the covered way, and (as is only fair) they cannot themselves fire unless they expose themselves in this way. Note that there are some dry-stone enclosures, the remains of old vineyards, we are told, which will be useful for some shelter for the outnumbered Allies.

Here, hiding off the table, are the Portuguese garrison of Almeida - or all of them we get to hear about, anyway. Here you see Colonel Cox, the fortress commander (who is English, of course, though he is in the Portuguese army) with a couple of battalions - the chaps with the white flag are militia. What could go wrong? In fact, attacking the fortress itself would be a remarkably stupid thing to do, so we'll outlaw that, to be on the safe side. I have no idea whose ox-cart that is - that isn't supposed to be there.

Reading about Crawfurd's Big Adventure has been interesting - I consulted a lot of books, and found a lot of very partial reports - he may have been anything from a hero to an idiot. The version I liked best was in Donald Horward's Napoleon and Iberia, which is a great book anyway. Horward makes a lot of reference to the memoirs of Colonel Emmanuel-Frédéric Sprünglin, a Swiss national who was Ney's ADC in Spain. I got quite excited about these memoirs, and investigated getting a copy. Ouch - very expensive.

Crawfurd himself is a mystery man - it's hard to avoid the impression that he behaved rather wildly during this little mini-campaign. He's a difficult man to get a handle on anyway. We understand that Wellington was an admirer of his abilities, and used to defend him against detractors, that Black Bob was a tough disciplinarian, but very highly principled and much loved by his men, yet there is also a strong impression that no-one could stand the blighter. I shall read further, of course - perhaps everyone was jealous?

***** Late Edit - 18th May *****

As of this post - possibly started for part of the last one - Blogger seems to have evolved yet further; previously there were some users for whom I did not receive notification if they left a comment. As from now, it seems I don't get any notifications at all. Not to worry - I just have to keep myself organised and check the pending folders - the other possibility is that I remove the approval check, but I don't fancy that - I still get some very strange stuff from political sites in Bangladesh, Ukrainian porn sites and assorted crap advertising portals worldwide, so I'll keep that step in.

If I miss any comments, or am slow getting to them, please bear with me - and sincere thanks, once again, to anyone who reads my blog!

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