The English Home Army in the Napoleonic Period

A Yeomanry officer circa 1800 - your homeland is in safe hands

A very pleasant gentleman named Frank got in touch with me by email, to see if I could help him. He and some friends have been exporing the possibility of fighting a Napoleonic-period campaign based in Southern England, following an invasion of some sort.

I asked did he mean the planned French invasion of 1805, and he said possibly, but not necessarily - any old invasion would do. He and his mates are fascinated by what the English home army consisted of - where would regulars be stationed, how much use could be made of the various militia and county yeomanry units - how were they dressed? - how would such an army be organised?

Naturally I haven't a clue. I have seen and read of such wargame campaigns in the past, but the British army usually looks suspiciously like the Waterloo force - the campaign is usually just the Hundred Days or the Peninsular War temporarily transplanted into Dorset or somewhere, which seems pointless.

Part of the appeal, of course, is the scope for painting up all sorts of colourful units of fencibles and suchlike. I used to have a book by Fortescue about the old county lieutenancies in the Napoleonic Wars, but I sold it years ago, and I recall an old Rene North series of colour-it-yourself cards based on yeomanry. I guess there must be standard works on this topic, but I do not know what they might be. Now I think about it, I used to have a rather tatty but complete set of CCP Lawson, and I think there were second-line units in that.

Obviously such a campaign would be dramatically affected by whether the main British Army was absent fighting elsewhere, but the idea of organising a home army to fight off Johnny Foreigner is quite attractive - Frank has plans for buying shedloads of plastics - Strelets British Egypt campaign troops - especially the light cavalry. As alternative history goes, that could be fun.

Anyway, it was kind of him to believe that I was wise enough to be able to help, but I have no idea at all. As they say in Glasgow, not a Scooby. Has anyone been involved in such a campaign, or does anyone know of any recommended books about the yeomanry and volunteer troops? All clues will be most welcome.

I'm sure it doesn't matter at all, but Frank is French, by the way...

Just Another Napoleon Groupie?

I've been poking about, doing some research as background for a forthcoming battle at the headquarters of the shadowy Baron Goya. Actually, "research" is a bit strong - primarily I've been browsing through lots of my old books, because that is the sort of thing I like to do.

The challenge is to find a suitable battle in which to oppose my French army to Goya's and Stryker's combined Austrians. That sounds easy enough, but we don't have any Bavarians or Wurtemburgers, and we do have Italians, so something from the eastern backwaters of 1809 or 1813 would fit the bill nicely - why, I even have a good supply of Spanish buildings, which can be transported to Italy at the drop of a cappello. 

Battle of Raab, 1809 - note that big granary building at the farm - hmmm - anyone
got a 15mm version of the very similar building at Essling...?

Good so far - the current proposal is to go for the Battle of Raab, 1809. My first discovery was that it isn't so easy to find very much about Raab; I managed to track down enough in the combined works of John Gill, George Nafziger, Scott Bowden and Professor WK Pedia to get a decent OOB drafted up, and enough of a narrative to give a context. I don't really do scenarios, as discussed before...

One of the obvious sources is Napoleon and the Archduke Charles, Francis Loraine Petre's famous book about the 1809 Danube campaign. A little disappointing, for once, in that there wasn't a lot about Raab, but also there was a bit of vitriol in the author's dismissal of Eugène de Beauharnais which surprised me. To set the context a little, for those unfamiliar (as I am) with Raab, Eugène commanded an army in Italy (and eventually, at Raab, in Hungary) against a secondary Austrian force commanded by the Archduke John. 

Now I am a convinced fan of FLP. One of my most enjoyable early experiences of what hobbyists like to think of as military history was in about 1978 or so. I spent a couple of months working my way through Petre's book about the 1813 campaign - on the No.16 bus to and from work! - initially a library book, but someone, alas, had borrowed the maps from the library book, so after a few weeks I bought my own, only to find that the maps, though present, were impossible to unfold on a bus, and almost impossible to read once you had.

No matter - the procedure was that I carried a notebook and pencil, did much scribbling on the bus, and in the evening before bedtime I would follow the action on a big wall-map and with Esposito and Elting's big red atlas. That was in the days before magnetic whiteboards - I had a big cork noticeboard, a mighty map and lots of coloured pins, and I had all sorts of detailed jottings of OOBs - who was where, and when, and who commanded them. The ultimate army roster. Fantastic - I had a terrific time. I've never quite managed to get so completely absorbed in a campaign subsequently, but I did buy four more of FLP's Napoleonic books, and became a big fan.

F Loraine Petre

I found his books easy to follow, clearly expressed, and carrying just enough military nuts and bolts to satisfy the hobby nerd, without threatening a brain haemorrhage. Everything seemed scholastically sound - why, he had even read a lot of foreign sources, which was not common for British writers at that time! It was clear from the old photograph of FLP in uniform on the back cover of the books that he had been a soldier. That's all I knew. His five "Napoleon" volumes - the campaigns of 1806 against Prussia (yellow cover), 1807 in Poland (orange), 1809 on the Danube (green), 1813 in Germany (blue) and 1814 in France (brown) were all consistent with his personal interests commencing after Austerlitz, and were written pretty much in chronological order, but the sequence seemed to imply some obvious gaps - no volumes on Spain, or Russia, or the 100 Days, for example. However, his five published volumes first appeared from 1907 to 1914, by which time the public's appetite for military writings might have waned - or maybe he became too old, or discovered darts and strong ale - who knows?

In the 1809 (green, that's right) volume, I found the following, which is interesting enough to reproduce in full:

This Italian campaign between Eugène and John is of little interest[,] for neither of the commanders possessed any great military abilities, and the whole thing was a series of blunders on both sides.

Erm - pardon? Fair enough, I suppose, but we can't deny that the campaign did take place, and the resulting casualties and political ramifications and misery were not necessarily anulled on account of FLP's lack of enthusiasm. Personally I can think of few things more interesting than a campaign fought between incompetents - we should note that historians have not used the same argument to ignore the First English Civil War, nor the exploits of the British Expeditionary Force in France. However, it is FLP's book, so if he wishes to give Eugène minimal space we can't really complain.

I believe this glossing-over is observable very commonly - general histories of the Napoleonic Wars are often very short of substance in those theatres in which Napoleon was not present. You can find this effect in the aforementioned Esposito and Elting atlas, even dear old David Chandler is guilty of averting his gaze a little when the Corsican hero leaves centre stage.

Anyway, no problem - I have found plenty of material for our battle, but I was left with a few unanswered questions about F Loraine Petre, so I did a little research on him, too. Not a lot to find, really. He was born in Aberdeenshire in 1852, descended from minor nobility, he was educated at Oscott College, became a lawyer and worked for the Colonial Civil Service in India from 1880, retiring as governor of Allahabad in 1900. At this point, as the result of his own personal interests, he became a writer of military history. He died in 1925.

So he was not an academic nor a soldier - he was a time-served diplomatic administrator turned amateur historian, who had the time and the money to indulge his interests, and - don't get me wrong here - he did a damned fine job, too. I wouldn't be without his books for anything, but I suddenly get a little suspicion about why those three campaigns are absent from his catalogue - Napoleon didn't do so well in those, did he...?

Most unfair, I know. I have to say it was not easy to get any useful information on Petre at all - if anyone knows a little more, I'd be delighted to be put right. In the meantime, I shall just nod smugly and mark him down as yet another Napoleon groupie, and he is, let's face it, in some excellent company.

Another Solo Campaign? - Looking at Boardgames...

GMT's "Wellington"

In the last few years I have played out a couple of solo campaigns - one set in the Peninsular War, one in an unknown part of Lancashire and Cumbria during the ECW. I enjoyed them both - I mean really enjoyed them - there is nothing like a campaign to throw up interesting, assymetric miniatures battles, or hopeless defences, or tricky withdrawals, or games of a size and a format that normally I would not consider - might not even think of. Also, of course, as a solo player I need not worry about the one-sided nature of many of the resulting actions.

I documented these campaigns quite thoroughly, and still get a lot of fun and interest out of revisiting the narratives and the photos.

The mechanisms for supply and map-moving are always tricky - and then there's intelligence - despite my best endeavours, I didn't get either of these campaigns quite right - too much admin overhead, and the map systems forced the action into the same areas too frequently. For the ECW I used a map based on a customised set of The Perfect Captain's famous Battlefinder cards - it worked OK, but only just OK. For the Peninsula I used a map derived from Don Alexander's monumental (and terrifying) boardgame, War to the Death.

I have been thinking about a return to the Peninsula, later this year. I have been reading about the use of proprietary boardgames to provide the campaign framework - an obvious enough solution. One big advantage is that, apart from handling the logistics, the boardgame has its own inbuilt battle mechanisms, which you can use as defaults, so you can place whichever bits of the campaign you wish on the tabletop for the toys to fight out.

A number of sources were enthusiastic about the Pacific Rim game, Wellington's War, to manage a Peninsular campaign. I have never seen this game - I've read reviews, and seen pictures, and I was once quite excited about it, but there was a strange period of a few years when it was always just about to be published, during which I lost interest. It is very expensive, and I am unlikely to rush to buy such a thing unless I am convinced that it is worth the cost. I mean worth it to me (and I can be very difficult, I admit it).

It did get me thinking about two games which I own already, though I have not attempted to play either of them seriously. Firstly, I have the aforementioned War to the Death, which is so fantastically complex that I shall just reject it out of hand as a campaign driver. However, I also have GMT's Wellington, which is a smaller brother of their Napoleonic Wars and uses many of the same mechanics. In fact I also have the Napoleonic Wars game - and I haven't played that either (this is getting embarrassing...). The NW game has a replacement, de-luxe folding board, which is a major enhancement. At the time I bought Wellington, that was due to get an upgraded board as well - I don't care for the flimsy paper jobs, especially if the game is going to lie around for some weeks while I fight a campaign. However, GMT decided not to go ahead with that, for some reason, and the game has sat in its box at the back of my big walk-in cupboard for a long time, still unpunched, still waiting for the posh map which will never come.

I fetched it out at the weekend, and have been re-reading the rules in odd moments for a couple of days. It does seem a bit complicated, but the kit includes a Play Book, which walks through some detailed game-play examples, and that looks pretty good. Time permitting, I hope to set up a demo game and walk through the Play Book examples, to see how it goes. Customer reviews I've seen sometimes make reference to the game's being rather hectically interactive, which suggests it might be a dead duck for solo play. I don't normally do hectic anyway.

So what? Well, I just wondered if anyone had experience of the Wellington game (it doesn't have hexes, by the way...) and/or had any views about its suitability as the driver for a campaign. I'm not committed to using it, but it is lying in the cupboard...

Or should I splash out on Wellington's War? - or do you have good experience with some other boardgame for this purpose? All thoughts and suggestions welcome!

ECW Campaign - Big Finish - The Battle of Brockleymoor, 1644

To resume our tale of the English Civil War in North Lancashire and Cumbria in 1644…

Capt Groves' Royalist firelocks occupied the churchyard at Leaning St Mary's,
but did not delay the brigade of the Earl of Dunbar for long

After the Battle of High Cark, the King’s forces were contained in the town of Lowther and the fortress of Erneford, on the River Arith, in north Lonsdale. The victorious Army of Parliament went into one of its habitual phases of re-organising itself, with the result that very little effort was made to lay siege to either of these places, or even to seal them from the outside world, and in early May the Royalists marched out of their supposed prisons with breathtaking synchronisation, meeting no serious opposition at all, and headed north toward the Royalist town and castle of Penrith, where they were to be joined by a reinforcement sent from the garrison of Carlisle. It is evident that communication between Carlisle and the valley of Arith had been untroubled by the presence of the blockading troops. 

So complete was the surprise achieved by this move that it took a few days for the Parliament forces to set up a pursuit.

The reinforcement had not yet reached Penrith when they got there, so the King’s men continued northwards, eventually meeting up with a force commanded by the military governor of Carlisle, Lord Peterkin Maule, near the town of Lazonby, two days' march beyond Penrith. This additional column brought from Carlisle consisted of the regiments of foot of Col Thomas Ganesbrough, Col Hendrik Penny, Col Charles Martindale and Col George Crompton, the regiments of horse of Lord Maule and of Col Josiah Trimbull and a couple of serviceable guns from the Carlisle garrison.

The augmented army turned to confront the pursuing Parliament force and met them near the village of Plumpton, in Cumberland, at what has become known as the Battle of Brockleymoor, on 27^th May 1644.

[The size of the forces involved, together with my beta-test “Brigade Orders” activation rule, required a raid on the spares box to raise extra officers, who were temporarily mounted on coins for the occasion - my apologies for the Old School informality.]

At the head of the Allied army, Sir Henry Figge-Newton was conspicuous by his absence – he had travelled to London on private business, and so the overall command devolved to the capable (though unloved) Sir Nathaniel Aspinall, who kept the Covenant forces in distinct brigades but took the admirable step of placing the Scottish general, William Geddes, in command of all the Allied Foot.

The field is fairly open – one fordable stream flows into an odd, swampy sink-hole, which was a no-go area at this time of year. The hills occupied by the Royalist line are not high, though the slopes were slippery after a period of rain. I hope to give a rudimentary narrative through the picture captions. The general style of the terrain is moorland fells, lightly wooded.

 General view from behind the Royalist left - Darracott held a symmetrical
line, cavalry on each flank, while the Allies placed their main weight on
their left, with extra horse in support of the centre. The village of Plumpton
is the middle of the Royalist position

Col Frayne's Northumbrian troops in the Royalist right wing

View from behind the position of Sir Marmaduke Davies' reserve brigade,
towards Geddes' slow but sure advance

Royalist dragoons at the lead mine, on the extreme left flank, had a very quiet day

After some delays caused by problems with orders, Geddes' left flank is ready to attack

Aspinall's plan (his army is on the far side) was to attack with his stronger left,
then to advance his right if the Royalist army started to shift reserves to support
their own right, but the day was decided before that.

Darracott was determined to hold his cavalry back, but the dice determined
that Broadhurst, on the Royalist right, saw an opportunity to harrass the flank
of the Parliament attack

Broadhurst had greater numbers, and handled his troopers well enough, but
his men could not fight for toffee. These are not the sort of dice you need when
fighting cavalry

Yet again, the fate of the Royalist horse suddenly became critical to the outcome
- this picture shows a sort of high-water mark, as Broadhurst's men have pushed
back the advance, but themselves have taken a battering. [Red counters are losses,
other colours denote the brigading]

It took a while, but the infantry attack finally goes in - Sir Julius Mossley has the leading brigade

The Parliamentarian cavalry brigade of Sir Beardsley Heron became the
surprise heroes of the day - after wrecking Broadhurst's horse, they took
the Royalist position in flank and caused a general rout there. Here
they arrive at the end of the Royalist reserve position, exposing the shakier
second-line troops - the Trained Bands of Penrith and Lazonby had not expected
to be subjected to this sort of treatment, and simply melted away. Sir
Marmaduke Davies was badly wounded trying to rally the shreds of his brigade.

The Royalist line is not what it was; Aspinall's hawk-like gaze was watching
for any movement of the reserves, but none came in time to save Davies and Monkton

The collapse of Darracott's right and the loss of a couple of general officers
produced a violent swing in Victory Points at the end - 12 was enough to win the day...

And still there is no action at this end of the table - not much remains of Darracott's right, though

Big Wullie Geddes waving his hat in victory, celebrating the end of the Royalist
presence in Lonsdale. Darracott, still with a large army despite the carnage,
retired to Carlisle. Aspinall, aware that many of his men were a long way from home,
and plagued already with high rates of desertion, let the King's army go, and
fell back to Lancaster. The campaign was ended.

Orders of Battle - Brockleymoor, 27^th May 1644

[Units marked # were from the Carlisle garrison; those marked * were remnants of units, converged to give a formation of useful size]

Royalist Army (Sir John Darracott)  3200 horse, 11065 foot, 2 guns

Horse (Lord Sefton)

Bde of Sir Allard Jenkinson

Jenkinson’s RoH

Ld Sefton’s RoH

Ld Cressington’s RoH

Bde of Sir Roderick Broadhurst

            Clevedon’s* & Broadhurst’s* RoH

            Moorhouse’s* & Noden’s* RoH

            Maule’s# RoH

            Trimbull’s# RoH

Foot (Lord Maule)

Bde of Col Monkton

            Monkton’s RoF

            Galliard’s* & Rice’s* RoF

            Ganesbrough’s# RoF

Bde of Lord Ullet

            Ld Ullet’s RoF

            Maxwell’s RoF

            Parkfield’s RoF

Bde of Sir Marmaduke Davies

            Davies’* & Fulwood’s* RoF

            Penrith TB

            Lazonby TB

            Penny’s# RoF

Bde of Col Frayne

            De La Roche’s* & Frayne’s* RoF

            Wooding’s RoF

            Martindale’s# RoF

Bde of Col Charlton

            Charlton’s RoF

            Fintry’s*, Corfield’s* & Brogan’s*

            Crompton’s# RoF

Unattached

Dingle’s Dragoons

Groves’ Firelocks

2 med cannons

[Losses on the day were approximately 1200 horse, 3000 foot, and two of the brigade commanders – Sir Roderick Broadhurst and Sir Marmaduke Davies – were severely wounded. Broadhurst subsequently died of his wounds on 4^th June.]

Allied Parliamentarian & Covenant Army (Sir Nathaniel Aspinall)  4000 horse, 11350 foot, 3 guns

Horse (Lord Alwyn)

Bde of Col Allington

            Ld Sudley’s RoH

            Ld Eastham’s RoH

            Pitlochrie Horse

Bde of Sir Beardsley Heron

            Heron’s RoH

            Winstanley’s RoH

            Chetwynd’s RoH

Bde of Sir Rowland Barkhill

            South’s RoH

            Barkhill’s RoH

            Dundonald’s RoH

Foot (Gen William Geddes)

Bde of Sir Julius Mossley

            Buckland’s RoF

            Mossley’s RoF

Grafton’s RoF

Bde of Col Bryanston

            Bryanston’s RoF

            Hawkstone’s RoF

Bde of Lord Lambton

            Burdett’s RoF

            Ld Lambton’s RoF

            Nielson’s RoF

Bde of Col St Clair

            St Clair’s RoF

            Laird’s RoF

            Petrie’s RoF

Bde of Col Herdman

            Herdman’s RoF

            Yester’s RoF

            Sweeting’s RoF

Bde of the Earl of Dunbar

            Snodgrass’s RoF

            McKinnon’s RoF

            Earl of Dunbar’s RoF

Unattached

Ancaster’s Dragoons

2 med cannons

1 heavy cannon

[Allied losses were approx 700 horse, 800 foot.]

ECW Campaign – Week 4

Barnabas Pobjoy, the formidable mayor of Midlawton, more than a match
for the unfortunate Lord Porteous

Some aspects of the week are also covered in the account of the Battle of Midlawton; what follows here is a summary.

The Parliamentarian army assembled in the area of Pacefield, and marched northwards towards Midlawton, where they were surprised by Lord Porteous, with all the troops he had available, but without the expected reinforcement under the command of General Sir John Darracott. The resultant Battle of Midlawton (28^th March 1644) is recorded in the histories as one of the great disasters of the Royalist cause – Porteous’ losses in killed wounded and missing were about 40% of his strength, he lost all his artillery and a number of his most able brigade commanders, and the wreck of his army fell back, as best they could, to Lowther. On reaching that town, with his army still strung out behind him in disorder, Lord Porteous announced that he was unwell, and retired to his quarters, leaving Lord Sefton in temporary command. Sefton had the challenge of doing what he could to organise some kind of army out of the bits, as more stragglers returned to their units.

Ralph Molyneux, Lord Sefton - commanding the Royalist
"Army of North Lonsdale" during the indisposition of Lord Porteous

Word soon reached Darracott, at Woodhouses with the supporting force seconded from the Marquis of Newcastle, of the catastrophe at Midlawton, and he ordered his troops forward to the fortress town of Erneford, to cover Porteous’ retreat.

Sir John Darracott - commander of the forces from
Northumberland

The victorious Sir Henry Figge-Newton handed over command of the Army of Parliament to Sir Nathaniel Aspinall (who was the actual field commander during the battle) and retired to Pacefield, to meet up with the Scottish Covenanter forces under Gen William Geddes (“Big Willie Geddes” to his men – Gen Geddes was a giant of a man, apparently – “six and a half” feet tall).

"Big Willie" Geddes - in command of the Scottish forces
seconded to Parliament

Aspinall duly took possession of the town of Midlawton (a situation he cannot have expected), including a portion of the baggage train of Royalist Army, with one of the treasure chests and much of that army’s correspondence and records, and he also acquired 4 good field pieces in working order, plus a mass of other abandoned weapons and ammunition. The mayor of Midlawton, Mr Barnabas Pobjoy, was keen to place his town at the disposal of Parliament, subject to some guarantees about the behaviour of the soldiers. He found Aspinall to be a rather more combative negotiator than Porteous had been, but he was also famed for his intolerance toward looting and any other ungodly activity in his army, and a gallows was promptly erected in the town market to emphasise what was expected of the soldiery. General Aspinall made it clear that the gallows would also be used to deal with any official or citizen of the town who caused any trouble or provided information to the enemy.

The Midlawton Town Guard (trained band without firearms) was taken into the Parliament army, and Aspinall appointed a new officer of his own to command it.

A large proportion of the losses on both sides at the Battle of Midlawton consisted of men who had gone missing – some of the Royalists were bona fide prisoners, but a great many had simply run away from the combat. The situation after the battle was complicated. Many of the Royalist units were raised in Cumberland and Westmorland, to the north, and – though many took shelter with sympathetic locals, or just disappeared – the best-supplied and quickest way home for these men was probably to rejoin their army in the retreat.

On the other hand, many of Aspinall’s soldiers had been recruited in Blackburn, Salford, West Derby and other areas well to the south, and the official orders forbidding collection of any booty from Midlawton brought a rush of desertions – many felt that the battle was won, the campaign must now be over, the immediate prospects for life in the army did not appear attractive, and they would be best setting off for home. Aspinall quickly detailed some of his units of horse to patrol the tracks heading south in search of deserters, but they had little success – they had too much ground to cover, and the situation was not helped by the fact that some of the troopers took the opportunity to desert also.

The consequence of all this was that the proportion of missing men who rejoined the colours after the battle was rather higher in the defeated army, which seems counterintuitive but was nonetheless true.

A pre-war portrait of Sir Roderick Broadhurst, hero
of Hobden's Mill, whose brigade of the Royalist horse
was practically destroyed at Midlawton

Royalist

Force A (Lord Porteous with the brigades of Rice, Fulwood & Parkfield, at Lowther), Force B (Lord Sefton with a detached force at Midlawton) and Force D (Col Broadhurst, with a cavalry force at Erneford) were ordered to garrison the town of Midlawton. This was compromised by the refusal of the Mayor of Midlawton to allow more troops into the town, followed by the unfortunate battle on 28^th – afterwards these forces merged into a revised Force A (Lord Sefton in acting command, with Porteous indisposed) and fell back to the area of Lowther.

Force F (Genl Darracott, with the reinforcement from the Marquis of Newcastle) had orders to rest until 5^th February at Woodhouses, but on hearing of the defeat at Midlawton he marched his troops to Erneford, the old fortress on the River Arith, to cover Porteous’ retreat.

Parliament

The various columns converged on Pacefield, and marched north, where they were engaged in battle at Midlawton. Following the battle, the victorious forces were merged into revised Force A, at Midlawton, under the command of Genl Aspinall (Genl Figge-Newon having left to join the Scots…)

Force I - General Geddes’ Covenanters marched from Briskhill to Pacefield.