French Siege Train: More Gunners

Thanks for positive reaction to the painted SHQ siege artillerymen from last week. I quite enjoyed the "factory" process of painting up the first lot of gunners for the Siege Train, so was happy to bash on ahead this week and get the rest of them done. It went well enough (though my current favourite brush seems to be moulting), and I got them finished quite quickly.

Two batteries of howitzers and two of Gribeauval mortars, to add to the siege cannons

I have to confess to a faint unease about this little project - I'm happy to have made such good progress (eventually), but there is something about it which maybe says something about me which I don't really care for. Online, one sees all sorts of projects which are beautiful, or which make use of rare and glorious figures, or which represent the height of the figure-painter's art for us to relish. This is none of these things - it is just BIG. Having decided to do it, I have gone about it (relentlessly?) and got it finished - it's kind of industrial. Never mind - I guess it's a personal style or something.

All right then - let's have a look at what's in this box now...

...all right, that's the whole lot

That's the guns ready for the French siege train, then - I may paint a couple of water buckets or ammo chests to make the bases more interesting, and I have some officers and some digging soldiers to paint - all looking quite promising. Another major gap in the Napoleonic siege effort is I still have to obtain some of the special MDF buttresses to enable guns to stand on my Vauban walls - it's in hand - the drawings exist, I just have to meet Michael from Supreme Littleness for a coffee next week and we are back on track.

Good. I'll tidy the brushes away until after Christmas.

Separate Topic - more pottery buildings.

I have obtained a couple more buildings for my ECW town...

On the right, The Priory, Lavenham, on the left a rather odd church...

...it's flat-backed! What in model railway circles I believe we used to call
low relief - this is a church to stick in the distance, against the edge of the table. 

French Siege Train: A Little Progress

The guns were painted up months ago, but recent diversions in the Real Life Dept have meant that the siege train has been stuck in a siding for a while.

You wish to lose a wall? a bastion, perhaps? These are the boys for you

The first batch of gunners are now painted and ready - I'm pleased with them. As ever, they are finished in my simple old toy soldier style, and the unpretentious little SHQ/Kennington crewmen are absolutely fine for purpose. These are the 3 batteries of 24pdr siege guns (old La Vallière pattern models, as is historically accurate for the French in Spain, though the purist might object to the rather later style of jacket...). The crews for the mortars and howitzers are undercoated and on the bottletops, so they should follow shortly.

The siege train also merits some senior officers to go with it, so I'll see what I can come up with.

Jean-Marie ponders - dolphins? why dolphins?

Sieges: A Small Matter of Supplies (and Mining, Just a Bit)

I’m pleased to say that my elderly mother is now safely moved to a care home, which is the best outcome all round – it has been a very difficult and distressing time. Also, we have now sold her house, which was quicker and far easier than it might have been, so, with a bit of luck, my life should be returning to something a bit nearer a state of normality in the next few weeks.

Without  wishing to jump the gun, I thought it would be good to plan a celebratory wargame – a proper, social wargame – for the first time in ages. And it also seemed like an opportunity to try out the siege game again, after my brief but unsustained spell of progress in April. When I come to think about it, though, there is a bit of a problem. It’s all very well running a solo siege, correcting (frequently inventing) rules as I go along, and glossing over the incomplete bits (such as supply – and then there’s mining…), but playing this as an actual game with real people requires a rather more polished show. Thus I am proposing to get the rules typed up in a sensible form (sort of), and fill in the more obvious holes in the game. If some motivational soul ever points out to me that a problem is really an opportunity, my instinct is normally to give them the opportunity of removing my cup of coffee from their shirt front, but it does seem a good idea to embrace this excuse for getting the rules written up. Yes – all right – before I forget them again – quite so. Thank you.

Let’s deal with mining very quickly, and I’ll return to it in some future post. In about 2010, Clive S came up here to help out with some siege testing, and it was pretty good fun, but one thing that was clearly wrong was the effectiveness of mining. Mining was so devastatingly successful in the test game that it made us wonder why anybody ever bothered with all that tedious bombardment stuff. As I frequently do, I shelved the problem, pending some great leap of inspiration or some further research. My shelves are overloaded with things like that. 

Trouble was that my mining rules were so brilliantly clever that I had completely missed the point, and failed to check the dimensions of the problem. Clive and I had our mining parties tunnelling at speeds which would have left the machines which dug the Channel Tunnel miles behind. I will not give details of just how fast our miners could dig – it’s too embarrassing – but if such speeds had been possible then it is clear that mining would definitely have been the standard approach – in fact the whole history of fortification  (and everything else) would have been vastly different. Just put it down as a misunderstanding.

I did a fair amount of reading of late – the most useful source was a nice little booklet published by the Shire people, Siege Mines and Underground Warfare, by Kenneth Wiggins. He actually discusses digging and tunnelling techniques, but the main thing I took from all this scholarship is that miners who had no bad luck and knew what they were doing would do well to average 3 paces a day for the progress of a tunnel.

Ah – right. 3 paces a day is about 20 paces a week, which is one tenth of the way across one of my terrain hexes. This is a very small nibble indeed in one of our battlefields, and requires a whole new look at the matter. Hmmm. This also explains why mining was something of a secondary activity – though useful on its day, of course. I’ll think about this.

Just before I leave the subject of mining – does anyone know where they keep those Channel Tunnel digging machines when they are not using them? Just wondered. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you would throw on the back of a low-loader and off to the next job – interesting…

So – supplies.

SUPPLIES!

I am looking for some dead-easy approach to supplies which does not lead to either insanity or a crippling bookkeeping industry, yet prevents the matter being forgotten completely. My rule of thumb (it may be one of Foy’s Laws, but I can’t remember which one) is that the cleverer and more realistic you make your add-on rules (command, morale, supply, whatever), the more fiddly they become and the more likely they are to be dropped during an otherwise exciting game. In other words, if you really wish to exclude all consideration of command and activation from your wargame (for example), spend a few weeks developing the cleverest rule system the world has ever seen to cover this, and the players will just abandon it on the day. [This may have some parallels in the world of Brexit legislation, but let us not go there.]

I started off with provender – I’ll leave ammunition for the moment. Starting place, obviously, is Bruce Quarrie. Interesting, but far too much information, man. Can’t see the wood for the flipping trees. From the classic Siege of Dendermonde I picked up the useful idea of 2 lbs of bread plus 1 lb of meat per man per day. Ron Miles had a lot of detail in there about how many portions of meat you get from slaughtering a cow (1000) or a sheep (80) or even a cat (1.5), so I decided the simplest way to do this is add the whole lot together as food rations – not to worry what the recipe of the day was. The important bit is that a soldier needs 3 lbs of food a day. A magazine will contain a weight of food, and I’ll formulate some rules on how much this needs to be. As a quick aside, this is an aspect of warfare I have always studiously avoided – so I was interested to see what amounts are involved here.

My unit of strength for my ECW forces is the base – 6 figs per base for foot (200 men), 3 per base for horse (100). It occurred to me that it might be a nice additional convenience to add fodder into the food stores as well, and assume that 100 horsemen consume the same amount as 200 foot – let us stop short of whether the men can eat hay or the horses like their beef well cooked – I’m looking for the simplest-ever supply system.

This is a detailed depiction of 4 lbs of food - that's all you need to know

Thus a base of foot will require 200 x 7 x 3 lbs per week, which is, near enough, 2 tonnes, if you add in the drink. That is a lot – thus a regiment of 3 bases of foot will eat their way through 6 tonnes a week, and (by dint of my bovine assumption of equivalence) a unit of 4 bases of horse will require 8 tonnes. On the basis of no science at all, I’ll assume that an artillery unit needs 4 tonnes a week – they have few personnel but a great many draught animals.

The poor old citizenry do not get to eat as heartily as the soldiers. I’ll assume that 1 tonne will feed 500 civilians for a week. OK – that gives me a basis to get started. I’ll add a rule about rations – military and civilian personnel may get full, ¾, ½, ¼ or no rations – which will affect the health and vigour and general happiness of all parties. Oh yes – about the civilians…

In the absence of factual historical data, the population of a township or conurbation can be generated by the formula nD6 x k, where n has the following values:

Major City – 15

Provincial City – 10

Market Town – 6

Village or fortress – 3

My first assumption is that k should be 250 (I may change my mind later) – thus a market town turning up 6 4 4 3 3 1 with its 6 dice has a population of 21 x 250 = 5250.

Standard split is 50% females; for both sexes, one quarter are children and infants, one quarter old or infirm, thus one half able-bodied. Overall split then is

Females – children 12.5%, able bodied 25%, old/infirm 12.5% and the same for Males, so our market town of 5250 might yield 25% able-bodied men = 1315 approx.

Now I need to check how much you can get in a wagon, how much on a mule. I bet Bruce Quarrie has something on this…

Next I need to develop this a bit, and work out some dice algorithms for the relationship between diet and vigour, vigour and susceptibility to outbreaks of fever; I also need to work out some rules for how the effective strength of a garrison is affected by the need to police the population, and how the attitude and loyalty of the population is affected by things like food supply, sustained bombardment. Lots to think about – that’s OK, I have some more free time and a bit more spare brainpower than I had a week or two ago, so I’ll enjoy the challenge!

Tey Pottery Buildings – Another Back-Door Collection

A couple of people have expressed interest in the ceramic buildings which I used in my ECW siege testing a couple of months ago. For the most part, these were made by the Tey Pottery company, now defunct, which operated from various locations in Norfolk. The range of which I seem to have become an accidental collector is the Britain in Miniature series, which suits my purposes admirably.

Tey Pottery "Britain in Miniature" - Grannie would have been delighted. The
white-backed buildings in the background make effective town blocks - the
textured-all-round items nearer the camera are more suitable for standalone pieces

I didn’t really need another unofficial collection, but I am pleased with what I’ve obtained, and have consciously cut down on purchasing now, in the sense that I am very picky about what I go for. I note that at the start of this year I wasn’t sure at all about the viability for the wargames table of items primarily intended for your grannie’s sideboard – these are ornaments, let’s make that quite clear – pottery knick-knacks, and they are neither serious models nor exactly accurate.

Some points (for and against) and things to watch for, if you have half a mind to acquire some of these miniatures:

(1) They suit me perfectly – they have a cheerful, almost playful brio which I find very appropriate to accompany toy soldiers – the Britain in Miniature (BiM) series are (mostly) to an approximately constant(ish) scale which I would describe as “smallish 15mm”. I deliberately use underscale buildings with my 20mm figures, because the smaller footprint is more acceptable (given the constant paradox of incompatible ground and figure scales), and because I believe a cluster of undersized houses looks more like a village than a single representative structure which matches the figure scale.

(2) Tey’s BiM range – if you are selective – will fit nicely in a 17^th Century setting. The buildings are, mostly, what in ship model terms would be called “waterline” representations, without bases or landscaping, and can be combined into effective town blocks which would be difficult and expensive to achieve otherwise. Be careful with sizes – the churches are too small for my taste, and the Countryside Collection and a few others contain smaller-scale items – anything which is obviously a generic cottage usually will not match.

(3) They are readily available and splendidly cheap – on eBay you can pick up nice examples for just a few pounds (they are available on US eBay, too though slightly dearer). Typically, I obtained lots for about 3 to 5 pounds each, and was the only bidder. On occasions, an attractive off-catalogue or commissioned item will attract heavier bids, so I normally duck out when the going gets tough. It’s only a hobby, for goodness’ sake…

(4) They are ornaments – they are delicate (though not too bad, if you store them sensibly) and they are glazed to a high gloss. Being a very bad person, I give them two coats of acrylic matt medium – if I need to do any touching up, or obliterate any anachronistic shop or pub signs, I can do that with acrylics between the varnish coats. I expect serious Tey collectors to be outraged by my destruction of their collectors’ value by this varnish business, but these things are plentiful, the value is not great and they are mine anyway (heh heh) – consider it equivalent to converting original Hinton Hunt figures!

(5) Some serious bad news – many of these pieces are untextured and plain white on the back, so have to be placed with care to make a convincing street scene, but this doesn’t cause me any difficulty. This can be a fairly confusing aspect of collecting Tey buildings – some of them are textured and painted all round – these tend to be detached-style buildings rather than sections of town blocks – and I mostly go for these now if I can. Some of the buildings have changed during their production history, so I have (reluctantly) been forced to learn more about the catalogues than I might have wished – in particular, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage appeared in a number of versions, some of which had plain white backs and some, like mine, are finished all round. Yes, I know, this is getting nerdy. 

So, overall, if they suit your purposes (or porpoises – thank you, Jonathan), these guys are cheaper and handier and quicker to deploy than wargames-specific  resin buildings, lighter and more robust (and less irritatingly cute) than Lilliput Lane or David Winter houses (though I cherish a fair few of those, too), and I find they bring a pleasing, colourful vibe to my siege activities, which really benefit from a bit of scenic interest. I still need specialist Hovels houses and similar, but as a bulk buy to make an easy, flexible town the Tey houses are great. Buy them selectively, keeping a careful eye on sizes and they do a nice job. For matching churches, I have found the most satisfactory source is the products of Sulley’s Ceramics, but these are rarer and more expensive.

At a whimsical level, I find it deeply amusing to set up a town which features Shakespeare’s birthplace, the Bronté family’s parsonage, the Rows of Chester, the Siege House (Colchester),  John Knox’s House (Edinburgh), and all manner of famous tourist sites – all in the same spot. Fantastic – I should wheel out one of my miniature tour buses to show off the rich heritage! I am cutting down on watching eBay now, but I keep an eye open for Anne of Cleves’ House, the Mermaid Inn and a few others. No – of course I am not a collector.

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...

French Siege Train - Heavy Metal

I've painted the guns for the siege train now. They are varnished, based and stored away in a new box (titled "French Siege Train" - how's that for organisation?) to wait for a small matter of 52 gunners plus (maybe) one or two senior officers.

This may be the least colourful photo of the year so far. I maintain a house tradition of 2 model guns per battery - the reasons for this are fading into obscurity, but as I recall they included:

* it is possible to field a half-battery (if you need one)

* 2 model guns have a definite front, and there is less scope for crafty spinning on the spot 

* I prefer the look of the thing (important)

* somebody (Charles Grant Sr?) recommended 2-gun batteries years ago, and I duly obeyed (even more important)

You can see here 3 batteries of Vallière-system 24pdrs (heaviest guns were the last to be converted to the Gribeauval system, since advantages of weight saving and standardised spares were less relevant - French siege train in the Peninsula had some very old guns) - models are Minifigs; 2 batteries of howitzers (different types) one lot are by Finescale Factory and the other are Hinchliffe 20mm; 2 batteries of Gribeauval 10" mortars (recently repatriated from the British and repainted - see "oops" reference in previous post) - these are also Hinch 20mm.

On the general topic of drab appearance, I was asked recently why I had adopted brown bases for siege equipment and personnel. I ignored any faint suggestion that it was not such a great idea, and explained that, since siege guns and sappers and similar people would spend most of their working time in specially-dug earthworks or sitting on (muddy) timber platforms, a nice shade of mud was felt to be appropriate for my Old School bases. At times, I confess, I have had doubts about it, but it would be a major project to change it now, so brown bases it is. Certainly, a siege battery sited on a beautiful croquet lawn, like my field artillery, would look spectacularly daft, so I'll cheerfully stick with this. However, olive green guns on a brown base are a bit dowdy, so I'll have to make sure the artillerymen get plenty of red plumes and so on, to brighten things up.

French Siege Train - Mortar Swap!

There is a law of Nature which I've been affected by on numerous occasions in the past, though I've never fully understood it and I've never seen it written down anywhere. Perhaps it is Foy's missing Fourteenth Law.

It works like this: you wish to (say) replace a tap-washer, so you go to the hardware store and purchase a pack of the things, and you dig out the bag of tools and find that the spanner you need has been misplaced, so you go to the garage to check the bicycle tools, and while you are in there you realise that there is a new wasps' nest under the roof, so you go to find the wasp spray and you spot that a mouse has chewed through a pack of lawn seed, which is likely to attract more of its friends, so you go to find a plastic detergent jar to put the lawn seed in, and so on and so on, and you collect a growing list of upstream tasks which eventually require you to move the house 4 feet to the left before you can do anything at all. As likely as not, the tap will still be dripping tomorrow.

To my surprise, my work on the French siege train suddenly involved some work on the Allied siege train yesterday. I have recently acquired some very nice Hinchliffe 20mm French 10" mortars, and when I assembled one I realised that it looked strangely familiar - in fact my British mortar batteries are already equipped with them. Oops. This, of course, will never do, so I decided that I would sort this out before anything else happened.

Re-equipped RA mortar batteries. Yes, you're right - the gunners are Warrior
figures, over-acting as usual.

As luck would have it, that splendid fellow Old John recently sent me some S-Range Coehorn Mortars, which would be just the thing to re-equip my Royal Artillery boys. I painted up the Coehorns, re-based the crews (taking the opportunity to remove those embarrassingly redundant chaps with ramrods - 3 figures is plenty for a mortar team anyway...) and put the French mortars carefully aside for repainting and reissue in the near future. So here are the British mortar batteries - units 345 and 346 in The Catalogue, with the regulation siege equipment brown bases - ready to go back in the box.

Meanwhile the guns for the French siege train are complete and just about ready for painting, so I hope to make a start on that tonight. If I find my olive green paint has solidified then there will be a short delay while I move the house a few feet to the left.


Separate Topic

Yesterday we visited The Hirsel, near Coldstream, the ancestral seat of the Douglas-Home family, and had a very pleasant walk in the grounds. In the course of our walk, we passed the Cow Arch (pictured), which intrigues me because there was a similar one at the old (ruined) mansion house here at the estate where our farm is. As I understand it, these things were to allow the cows to cross the driveway without spattering it with unmentionables. This was practical, I guess, especially in the days when people wore more ornate finery than we do now, but - strangely - the riding horses and coach horses of the gentry were free to spatter everything in sight with impunity. This was somehow acceptable - in fact it continues to be acceptable to this day, as anyone visiting my house (on a farm with an active riding stables) will testify.

Two generations of the Foy dynasty pose beneath the ancestral Cow Arch of
the Douglas-Homes. Not a cow in sight, by the way.

If you are not familiar with the idea of something being spattered with impunity, it is not especially pleasant, particularly under the wheel-arches of your car on a hot day. Enough - I hope I have not put you off your pain au chocolat this morning.

Death by MDF Bases - a stocktake

Sorting out the MDF bases - first find them all, then sort them, then count...

I’ve become very used to my laser-cut MDF bases now. There was a time when I would happily cut up my own bases with the trusty Stanley knife and a steel ruler, and I still do this (obviously) for any odd sizes that I need, but – however hard I try – the home-cut ones look scruffy next to the bought-in laser jobs.

As part of this move towards decent bases over recent years, I made a valiant attempt to standardise on my base sizes, to limit the confusion and make stock control easier. I’ve mentioned my base sizes before – it probably wasn’t interesting then, either, so I’ll assume I’m safe to mention them again!

When I think about it, my Napoleonic frontages come from old WRG rules. I can’t remember which rules, or which edition, but 15mm per figure for close-order infantry, 25mm for heavy cavalry and 30mm for light cavalry became rooted in tradition here, and – for obvious reasons – once the base size has been in force for a while, as long as it works OK, it’s not a great idea to change your mind about it.

So I have made a conscious effort to go for a small number of standard base sizes. I won’t go on at great length about this, but there is always a subtle pressure towards increasing the number of sizes – just one more new standard…

I use large numbers of the following (all measured in mm wide x mm deep):

50 x 45           line infantry (2 rows of 3 men) and heavy cavalry (2 figs wide)

60 x 45           light cavalry (2 wide)

25 x 45           single heavy cavalry figures

30 x 45           single light cavalry figures, also generals & staff

and then there’s

80 x 25           infantry skirmishers (open-order line of 3)

80 x 20           alternative skirmisher bases – used in mixed order units

60 x 80           field gun + crew (2 guns to a battery)

and then there are standard sizes for different kinds of unit sabots, and bases for artillery limbers, caissons, wagons, mule trains – and this is where the number of variants keeps increasing. When I started collecting siege guns and equipment, some new, more compact sizes appeared, to keep the footprint down, and because the siege pieces have smaller crews. I’m currently preparing some guns for the French Peninsular War siege train – there will be 3 batteries of 24 pdrs, 2 of howitzers and 2 (maybe 3) of mortars – I am reminded that for the big siege guns I use a base of 45 x 90, and for the mortars (apparently) I have adopted 45 x 65, which is an odd size but seems to be a bit more roomy than the existing 60 x 45. I conducted a proper stocktaking exercise (the first part of which was identifying the 4 separate boxes which contained random mixtures of fresh bases). I’m proud to say that I have now an official note of how many of each size I have and need, so an order will be going out today. I have promised myself that I am going to keep the spare bases in properly labelled boxes, so stock control will be much easier [what do you think? – do you think I’ll keep it better organised in future? – no?...].

I’m going to be working on the French siege stuff for a while – I have lots of gunners to paint up and everything. I’ll put some pictures up as and when items are finished.

For a while I had a brilliant idea that a French siege train, with appropriately nondescript colouring of the equipment, could also serve as a Spanish one, since the artillery uniforms are very similar. When I thought further about it, though, I couldn’t remember the Spanish army actually besieging anything, so this might not be a very high priority. [Please don't anyone mention Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren.]

Over the next few nights I will be putting together 20mm scale cannon kits, so I will get a chance to try out my new superglue accelerator. This should be an exciting advance, you would think, but I find I am mostly apprehensive. Of what? I’m not sure – I think I must be worried that the accelerator will not work; I find these little disappointments loom larger as I get older…

This post is quite long enough, but I realise that I have not mentioned my ECW basing system, which is different. Only comment I might make is that I cunningly adopted 60mm square bases for both foot and horse, and this has been a great success, except that sometimes, when I am being especially honest with myself, I wish I had chosen 55mm square, which would have fitted my hex-grid tabletop just a bit better. No matter – everything is fine. I promise I am not changing anything.

Sieges - The French Siege Train in the Peninsular War

One of the fortress gates at Almeida

My previous post identified the 25mm scale model I propose to use for Napoleon's 24pdrs in his siege train in Spain. So the next obvious question I have to ask myself is, "How many of these will I need?", which leads on to a pile of more general questions about what the siege train consisted of in real history.

Having thought about it for a while, I have decided that a rather pleasant way to educate myself on this topic is to re-read (and this time complete!) Donald D Horward's wonderful Napoleon and Iberia, with extra detail and nuts-and-bolts OOBs and equipment lists supplied from an ebook of Belmas' Sieges which I have here.

I am still assembling the bits and pieces to set about this, and am doing some preliminary poking about - just to get a feel for the subject. The French siege train is not brilliantly documented, unless you really dig for it. Horward's book is concerned with the French sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida in 1810, but if you look up the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo on Google all you will find is Wellington's successful siege in 1812.

In 1810, the French force before Ciudad Rodrigo consisted of Marshal Ney's (augmented) VI Corps, comprising the three infantry divisions of Marchand, Mermet and Loison, with a minimal cavalry force of one small light brigade under Lamotte, and with VI Corps' own artillery, commanded by General de Brigade Charbonnel, of 3 foot companies and 2 of horse - that's one foot battery for each infantry division, one horse battery for the cavalry and one horse battery as a reserve.

Charbonnel - commander of VI Corps' own artillery

In addition, attached to Ney, was the siege train of the Armée de Portugal, arrived from France, and equipped with 50 guns.

General Eblé - in charge of all the artillery of the Armée de Portugal,
including the siege train 

Here's the French OOB:

Belmas gives a lot of detail about the siege train - including the returns of it's commander, General Eblé - this covers how many roundshot and shells were fired, how many kilos of powder used, how many gabions used and so on and so on. For the moment, I shall merely note that the 50 guns consisted of 10 canons de 24, 7 canons de 16, 12 canons de 12, 8 obusiers (24pdr howitzers, I deduce from the returns of consumption of ammo), 4 mortiers de 12p, 3 mortiers de 8p, 4 mortiers de 6p and 2 pierriers (did they really fire rocks?). Again, I'm feeling my way here, but I gather the mortars are measured in pouces, so that a mortier de 8p is an 8-inch piece (approximately).

The siege train has seven identified companies of Artillérie à Pied - I have no idea (at this stage, anyway) whether these were kept as distinct "battery" units, or whether the personnel were mixed. Seven companies would be a sensible way of organising 50 guns anyway, so I have assumed that the artillery of VI Corps was available over and above the 50 pieces of the siege train.

I was surprised at the high proportion of 12pdr guns in the siege train - this suggests that the 7 companies might break down into something like:

2 batteries of heavy siege guns (24pdrs and 16pdrs), 2 of 12pdrs, 1 of howitzers and 2 of mortars. Adding a large sprinkle of wargamer's licence, I propose to make that 3 units of big guns (at 2 gun models per unit), 1 of howitzers and 2 of mortars. I already have plenty of 12pdrs with my field army, if they are needed - this would also make the French siege train a bit smaller than the Allied one.

That's a first stab, so I should order a further 5 of the big MALA3 castings from Miniature Figurines for my 24pdrs. I may change my mind again, once I get another chapter further into Horward. This is the sort of little project I like - books with post-it tabs sticking out everywhere, lots of scribbled notes - excellent.

The siege train of the Armée de Portugal didn't last very long - it was captured as part of the 158 French and Spanish guns taken in Ciudad Rodrigo when Wellington took the place back in 1812.

Sieges - French 24pdr

Thanks very much for the various suggestions received for siege gun castings. Special thanks to Mr S Wargamer, of Hampshire, who drew to my attention item MALA3 in the current Miniature Figurines 25mm catalogue - officially described as a Marlburian siege gun.

So I imported one to try it out. It looks as close to a 24pdr Vallière system gun, such as would have been used by the French in the Peninsula, as I think I'm going to get without having something specially made. The wheels are 21.5mm diameter, which is correct for 1/72 scale - I included some spare NapoleoN gunners to give the idea. Looks pretty good, I think? The Vallière guns were some 75 years out of date by the Napoleonic wars, but the big siege bangers were well down the queue for modernisation - the Gribeauval principles of light weight and standardised parts didn't really suit the heaviest stuff. Which means, I guess, that this gun could take part in a siege at any time from about 1690 to 1830, for any number of nations - a coat of dirty olive green paint and no-one will know the difference. Once I have it painted, I'll photograph it next to one of the British iron siege guns, for comparison - but don't hold your breath.

I have to say that the gun was fiddly to assemble - casting was not brilliant, so a lot of cleaning up of the pieces was needed, and supergluing the little plates to attach the trunnions is exciting - do not sneeze. Mission accomplished, anyway, so if a klutz like me can manage it, it must be plain sailing.

I'll have a look at this for a few days - if I still like it, I'll order up another seven of the things - that's enough for 4 batteries, and I'll start looking around for howitzers and mortars to suit - better read up on my pdf copy of Belmas to check what they had in the train. I'll also need more gunners - I have some spares, but not enough. I am a little shaken to see that the Art Miniaturen range seems to have been cut down a bit - at least it looks that way on the new website - so I may be looking at multiple sets of the cheap-and-cheerful Kennington gunners to make up the crews.

And yes - thank you - I do realise that the silly little rammer/sponge is not going to serve that monster very well, so less of the vulgar humour, if you don't mind...

More Old Crockery

My new collection of used pottery ornaments was recently on display in the photos of the ECW Siege of Middlehampton test game, and it attracted some favourable comments. As I've mentioned, I have taken a liking to Tey Pottery buildings, which were produced by a now-defunct firm based in Norfolk, were made in a fairly constant scale, in the region of what I would call 15mm, and are readily available at pretty low prices on eBay. I think this is a decent, low-cost way of getting in extra buildings - cheaper and less work than buying in resin castings and painting them up, and possessing a lot more charm and general brio than industrial MDF.

I have to put my hand up straight away and admit that I have been applying matt varnish to the things, in order to use them as wargame scenery, which should rightly appall any serious collectors, but am well pleased with the little 17th Century town centre I have built up with them.

The one obvious gap in my town is the lack of a cathedral, or at least a big parish church - in all of John Speed's town maps, the churches are the key points, and districts and town gates were commonly named after the religious buildings.

The off-the-shelf Tey churches are rather unimposing, but they also did special commissions, and one such appeared on eBay a couple of weeks ago. I was rather taken with it, decided I would be prepared to go as far as £12 or so to provide spiritual enrichment for my ECW townsfolk, and looked on as the auction closed on the Sunday evening. Hmmm. There was a sudden rush of interest at the last minute, and the church sold for £125 or thereabouts, which proves it was quite a nice church, I guess, but I hadn't thought it was as nice as all that.

Anyway - water under the bridge - I wasn't bothered, but I've kept an eye open to see if any similar items came up. Sure enough, one did, within a week - not Tey, this time, but a very similar size and format. This one stayed within my price range, I bought it and it arrived this morning.

I haven't got the dreaded matt varnish on it yet, but I thought I'd show it off a bit. The 20mm Les Higgins drummer in the picture would have to stoop a little to get in through the doors, but that's exactly the size of buildings I like, to keep the footprint down. This is from Sulley's Ceramics - new to me, very similar to (and frequently confused with, I think) Tey Pottery buildings - nice, isn't it? Maker's label on the underside gives an old-format UK phone number, which must date the model earlier than 1995 - I'd say 1980s, but I'm guessing.

The original church is in Suffolk, I understand - if anyone recognises it, please give me a shout! Also, if you recognise it as the trinket that used to sit on your mother's piano, give me a shout anyway.