French Siege Train - Ramrod Enhancement

Ramrod salesmen really don't want you to know about this neat trick.
Kennington gunners in 1813 uniforms, all ready for sieges in 1810 - no wonder they are smiling.

I do have some OOP NapoleoN gunners available, but, since I need big numbers, and since the Siege Train is probably going to spend the vast majority of its time in its box, I am intending to man my French siege equipment with cheap and cheerful (and underrated, in my opinion) SHQ/Kennington crews.

I've still got one small shipment to come, but most of the figures are here, and I've cleaned them up and put them on the regulation bottletops, ready for painting. I also took the opportunity to carry out some modest conversion work, equipping half a dozen of the gunners with ramrods of a suitable size for the 24pdr behemoths.

My photo includes an unadjusted specimen, front centre, for comparison. A razor saw, a pack of needle files, a pin vice and some (accelerated!) superglue and I am a happy chappie - no doubt about it!


Separate Topic

Since today is the 204th anniversary of the Battle of Salamanca (that's Los Arapiles to you European fellows), I am feeling rash enough to do something naughty...

I'm not supposed to show anyone these, but here's a "leak" of some photos of the masters of some new Portuguese Cacadores I have commissioned (in 1/72 white metal) from Hagen Miniatures. In due course they will appear for sale on Hagen's website, but I thought I'd sneak in a quick appetiser. These are to be marketed under the Foy Figures name, to join the Portuguese Line infantry and 1809 Spanish line cavalry which are already on sale from Hagen. The website is here.

Special message to Armand (Tango01) - please do me a favour, and don't link this to TMP...

The Grand Tactical Game - Action at Los Arapiles

This was the planned refight of Salamanca, using my new MEP rules. It's the first time I have attempted to stage a historical battle, and I thought long and hard about the best way to do this.

Since part of the objective was to prove the rules, it seemed inappropriate to attempt just to act out what really happened, yet ignoring the history altogether would kind of nullify the whole point of making it Salamanca. I decided to set up the action as it stood at about 1pm, put a few of the principal events into the first few bounds, and see what happened.




Well, it didn't turn out to be a very close copy of history - my starting point was to be the attack on the French left flank by Pakenham, with cavalry support, and Pack's independent Portuguese brigade's assault on the Greater Arapile, a hill in the middle of the French position.

Things started pretty much as in the real battle - Pack's attack was repulsed, and Pakenham quickly broke Thomieres' leading brigade, though his own losses were severe. History stopped dead at this point. The British heavy cavalry (Le Marchant's brigade) made no progress at all in following up - they were checked by Thomieres' weak second brigade - so much for the most glorious cavalry charge in British history. Then Cole's and Leith's Divisions were very badly mauled by the divisions of Barbot (vice Clauzel), Maucune and Bonet in the centre, and the momentum was lost. The French position was strong, any further British attempt to attack would have been foolhardy (the Allied off-field reserves, primarily the 7th Division and De Espana's Castillian troops, were not due for an hour, and were not capable of affecting the outcome), and there was little else that Wellington could do but resume his retreat towards Portugal. The French cavalry was not up to the job of harrying the withdrawal, and both sides left the field in reasonable order around 3:30pm. French casualties were slightly higher at about 10% of all troops engaged, and they lost two senior generals in Bonet and Tirlet (commander of the artillery reserve).

The rules worked well enough - artillery counter-battery fire seemed possibly a bit too effective, but it's debatable. The weather was fine and dry throughout, the only command snag of note was when Lowry Cole called off his attack on Bonet, which was probably good judgement. The game (it didn't feel very much like a game, since I spent much of the time with my nose in Dr Muir's book, checking the script) was over in about 90 minutes - I was running the rules on a computer, and did cut back on the skirmishing, which was mostly ineffective (which is probably correct, and was expected).

So a bit of a damp squib, all in all. I was persuaded by Dr Muir that Maucune was accompanied by an amount of artillery which could only have been possible if part of the reserve park was so deployed, and that may have been a significant element. Don't know, really. I also have to say that, when you see the real numbers of troops set out on the battlefield (scales were 1 hex = 1/4 of a mile, 1 bound is an hour, 1 figure = 125 men for this game), it seems improbable that the French could lose, unless there is some major morale advantage working against them.

I do not intend to repeat the action, so I include some pictures, just to prove it happened.

All right - it was a lot of fun, really, but I'm rather disappointed that the big battle stalled! It was pleasing to be able to attempt a battle on this scale, but the little units still feel a bit strange.

General view of the battlefield, looking West. The French position is down the near edge of the table, then up the left hand edge. From the right, the French have the Divisions of Foy (far right), Ferey, Sarrut, Bonet (on the hillock and beyond), Barbot, and Maucune in the centre on the ridge. At the far end, on the left flank, is Thomieres, with support from Taupin and the light cavalry of Curto. Note the rather exposed position of William Anson's British brigade, on the hill of the Lesser Arapile in the centre of the picture.

Wellington's hammer - the Allied Third Division on Wellington's extreme right, under Pakenham, with cavalry on both sides, forced-marching to attack Thomieres. It didn't go too well...

The rest of the Allied position - Leith's Division in the foreground, supported by Clinton, then, further away, Cole, Pack's independent brigade, Henry Campbell's First Division and the Light Division (Karl von Alten) on the extreme left.

View from behind Clauzel's position. In the real battle, the French were convinced that the Allies were in retreat - you can see why - there's not much over there, is there?

Almost the end - the French haven't moved very much, but their centre looks pretty solid. Time to get marching and try another day.

The Grand Tactical Game - Salamanca OOBs again

This has been a very odd two weeks - I was effectively snowed in for most of the time, and, now that we are getting back to what passes for normal around here, I've been rushing about catching up with all the things I couldn't do during the bad weather.

Hence the drop-off in the blogging activity. I have, however, managed to spend a little time putting the MEP Grand Tactical rules onto the computer, and things are progressing well - I hope to have everything up and running in a week or so.

I've also been refining the set-up and scenario for my proposed Salamanca battle. I'm still not sure whether I just try to act out the actual events, or (more likely) set it up at a point in time and then let the game rules rip, and see where I get to. My intention is to start the action at about 1pm, as the French left flank is becoming over-extended and just after Marmont has been carted off, wounded, and replaced by Clauzel.


To set the context and check details I have a full set of Oman's history available, and various other useful works, but have had an absolutely wonderful time re-reading Rory Muir's book. Just great. He dissects the battle into its principal actions, and at the end of each chapter there is a commentary section which discusses the inconsistencies between the various sources and tries to resolve areas of doubt - in many instances this is at least as fascinating as the account of the fighting. Yes, this is a well-known book, but I thought I would record my appreciation, and recommend it most highly to anyone who has not read it.

So here is my (tweaked) Order of Battle, as printed out by my computer program.

The figures are EL: Elements (750 inf, 500 cav, 1 battery), QB: Quality Bonus, SK: Skirmish capability. The numbers in square brackets are the identifiers for the computer.


I have followed what I believe to be current thinking on the French organisation: Barbot stands in for Clauzel, Col Loverdo for Barbot, Taupin is in charge of Brennier's Divn, Thomieres in charge of Souham's; the cavalry brigadier Carrie de Boissy is absent, since he had been wounded and captured 4 days earlier. Senior colonels command brigades wherever appropriate.


On the Allied side, I've excluded the Spanish lancers (because it's a small force, and I'm not sure where if at all they were engaged), and I've put all the Spanish infantry into a single brigade, just to make it large enough to be useful.

Throughout, units which are known to have been absent or posted off the field are omitted, and the listing of battalions and cavalry regiments is fudged a bit to balance the total numbers against the historical OOBs. If your favourite regiment has disappeared then I apologise - I too was disappointed that my newly painted Regiment de Prusse was excluded by the rounding rules!

The Grand Tactical Game - Salamanca Battlefield

Having put together a first-cut OOB, the next task has been to draw up a battlefield diagram and see if it is possible to get everybody on! Here is my first attempt - I learned a lot in the process, and found some things where I need to decide on some rule changes.

This is all a fudged approximation, based on my understanding (such as it is) of maps in Oman, Marinsin, Ian Fletcher's Osprey book, Rory Muir's excellent study and various other sources. I also consulted the set-up instructions for Maplay Games' Salamanca boardgame and for the Simtac Los Arapiles game.


You will see Thomieres heading off to the left, his orders based on the incorrect assumption that the Allies were retreating in that direction. The Allied 3rd Divn is moving down to attack him. Green hexes are woods, green troops are Portuguese.

Behind Point A are Bradford's Portuguese Brigade, De Espana's Spanish division and George Anson's Light Cavalry Brigade.

Behind Point B are the Allied 7th Division.

Some slight changes in the OOB - no doubt there will be more:

(1) Victor von Alten was wounded early in the day, and his brigade is commanded by Col Arentschildt of the 1st KGL Hussars. For convenience, I propose to include D'Urban's small brigade of Portuguese dragoons in Arentschildt's force.

(2) French 15th Dragoons were detached, off the battlefield to the French right, so I propose to amalgamate Boyer's 3 remaining dragoon regiments into a single brigade, as shown.

(3) Bock's KGL dragoons are also detached, somewhere off the table on the Alled left, so I'll omit them from the OOB.

(4) Just for commonsense, I'll give one of Thomiere's batteries to Bonnet.

Now - Artillery. Shock horror. I have suddenly realised what was probably obvious from the outset, which is that scaling down the numbers of infantry and cavalry units while keeping the artillery unchanged results in the table suddenly becoming covered in artillery. Why didn't I think of that before?

If I try to deploy all the artillery in its own space, the table gets swamped again. Hmmm. You will notice that this first attempt at the battlefield shows no artillery at all, while I decide what to do about them.

First thing I did about them was I did some more reading of other people's rules. Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee, which is of a similar scale and approach to MEP, makes no attempt to represent divisional-level artillery on the table at all - they are simply assumed to be part of each division, and the only guns that are explicitly deployed are reserve batteries. I can see how that would work, but it doesn't appeal. As with the skirmishers, I'd rather have the divisional guns visible on the table, but in some way that isn't a nuisance.

So my current idea is that a divisional battery just squeezes into a hex with one of the brigades. I'm still thinking this over - a hex is about a quarter of a mile (500 paces). What's the frontage of a 6-8 gun battery? Maybe 100 paces - maybe a bit more? Would it be possible to squeeze them in like this?

I'll do some more reading on the subject - as ever, I'd be delighted to receive advice here. I'm also intrigued to know what Marmont did with his artillery - there are some odd references to the work of divisional batteries - supporting Thomieres, for example - but I've never seen any reference to the reserve batteries, and there were 5 or so, as far as I can see. Further, I've never seen any map or depiction of Salamanca which showed any positioning of French artillery.

Since Marmont started the day assuming that his army was about to resume their march to keep pace with Wellington's retreat, maybe the artillery reserve was simply limbered up in order of march, ready for a long trip. I'd like to get a bit more detail on some of that. So - back to the books.

More soon.

The Grand Tactical Game - Salamanca OOBs

This feels like jumping the gun a bit - it is my intention to stage some kind of re-run of the Battle of Salamanca at some point during the playtesting of the MEP Grand Tactical Rules. As I mentioned before, I have very mixed feelings about any kind of re-enactment of a real battle, but I've never been able to do it before, so this will be proving a point. In the interests of humanity, it will probably be a solo effort!

One of the things I need to do is check that I am actually going to have enough troops to do it (and that they'll fit on the table!), so I've translated the historic OOB's into MEP terms - you'll find the tables below, somewhere. The numbers in brackets after the unit names show how many elements that unit contributes - this will not necessarily be the number of actual battalions which took the field in 1812, the numbers are tweaked to match the overall headcount. And, especially on the Allied side, some of the very small regimental units have been omitted - the numbers still add up.

Thanks once again to my loyal friend Marco, who emailed me some very useful feedback on the MEP draft. He pointed out that a very large brigade is potentially unstoppable, and that a very small one with bad morale could have a starting points value (PV) of zero, which means, of course, that they are eliminated before they set out! Accordingly, two new amendments have been incorporated in the draft (which can be downloaded here):

* a maximum of 4 elements count towards a unit's (brigade's) PV, thus (for example) a unit with 5 Elements and a Quality Bonus of +1 has it's PV restricted to 4 + 1 = 5.

* any single-element unit whose QB is -1 should have a minimum PV of 1 - do not attach the white (negative bonus) counter. Unless such a unit has a significant role in the battle, it is suggested that single-element units be dropped from the OOB, or rolled into another unit.



So here is my first attempt at the OOBs for Marshal Marmont's Armee de Portugal and the Earl of Wellington's Allied army on 22nd July 1812. Remember that the "Units" are the entities in the "Brigade" column. PV figures in red in the table are ones which have been adjusted for Marco's new rules. I have consciously been niggardly in awarding QB points, and I have also marked Bonet's Division down a bit since his troops appear to have had little battle experience. The "Sk" notes in the details of the Allied army show where, for mainly cosmetic reasons, skirmish figures should be from a particular unit.

Conclusions? I'm a bit short of Brunswick skirmishers, but I can do it, fairly comfortably, if I use stand-ins. I think I'll omit the Portuguese cavalry and Don Sanchez's Spanish lancers, just because they were tiny units.

I am thinking of commencing the action at the point at which the French left becomes over-extended. Since it is a (sort of) re-enactment, I will not need to use Blinds or Command rules, so the current MEP draft will probably suffice. I could do this playtest quite soon, in fact.

I'd better get myself organised. More soon.