Battle of Santiago Martir, 11th April 1809

 Peninsular War Zoom game took place yesterday - I was the host and the French commander (Marshal Victor), trying to capture the crossings over the River Mezquino, defended by a force from the Spanish Army of the Centre, commanded by Stryker (Conde de Belvedere).

 

Gentusa - history makes little mention of this fellow, but he and his irregulars performed well at the Spanish defence of the Mezquino

The Spaniards had a hybrid force, including a contingent of irregulars under the command of the (little-known) Don Pedro de Gentusa. The French had Sebastiani's (French) Division and Leval's (German) Division, plus an attachment of cavalry from Latour Maubourg's reserve.

Commands & Colors rules, with my Ramekin modifications. I'll append the player instructions and scenario notes at the end of this post (if I remember). 10 Victory Points for victory - the French had bonus VPs available for capture of town hexes, bridge and fords at the town of Santiago.

 

Initial view from the French right flank. The French have the Confederation of the Rhine troops at this end, and the French troops at the far end. On the other side of the table, the Spanish left is rather improvised, with irregular troops supporting line and light infantry; at the far end, on the Spanish right, two battalions of Milicias Provinciales are tucked safely away behind the line.

 

First action (to everyone's surprise) was an opportunistic attack by the Spanish cavalry, on their right, which discomfited the French 15eme Chasseurs, but was driven off with heavy loss by the 4eme Dragons.

 

 

On the Spanish left, the guerilleros were brought forward early, to plug gaps in the line at the fords. At this point, a group of the irregulars is placed next to the elite Guardias Walones, which must have caused some disquiet to the guardsmen. Note that we used big red counters (for Zoom) to denote elite troops, black counters to denote the irregulars and the militia. Note also that the fords are a lovely shade of sky blue, as mentioned in Tripadvisor.

 

 

Back on the Spanish right, Colonel Ramos da Silva has brought his rather battered light cavalry back into the line.

 

The French cavalry, having won their first scrap (on points?), are now shaping up to have a second round.

 

On the French right, Leval's voltigeurs are not doing particularly well against the Spanish light regiments of Cataluña and Campo Mayor. The Spanish troops were shooting particularly well at this stage of the action...

 

 

Leval's line troops move up - Nassau troops to the fore (yellow flags), with Frankfurters (oh, how we laughed) and Hessians in support.

 

By some miscalculation, the 1st Battn of 2nd Nassau arrived at the fords all on their own...

 

They were duly pulled back a little, then suffered 3 retreat flags to enemy fire (no losses, just 3 retreat flags), so their retiral was increased to 4 hexes (that's 800 paces) in one turn, ending up behind a hill, very much out of breath. This, as far as I recall, is an all-comers' record for running away in my C&C games (that's for non-Spanish line troops, of course...) 

 

Here's a quick view of the town, which the French made a point of not attacking. In the town itself, you see the Regimiento Irlanda (light blue jackets) and a combined battalion of grenadiers. To the immediate left of the town you can see the Walloon Guards, who took some losses but were successfully rallied on two occasions, thanks to the presence of General Portago (a noted orator, apparently)

 

 

Now the Spanish left flank was re-organised, to prepare for a heavy attack from Leval's Germans, who were finally coming up to attack the fords

 

 

A drone shot of the 1/2nd Nassau, recovering their composure after their record retreat.

 

At this point, over on the French left, Latour Maubourg paid the Spanish cavalry a return visit, and eliminated them, and also forced the 1/Africa into square, but they were driven off by musket fire.

 

The French pulled back on the left flank, and did little further in this area - though a couple of battalions were sent to support Leval's men on the right.

 

It had taken him a while, but Leval now put together a co-ordinated attack on the Spanish left. By this time, the Walloon Guards had lost interest in General Portago's rallying speeches, and had left the field. The Spanish left was getting very stretched.

 

This little unit did a fine job on the Spanish left - the Lanceros de Carmona. Stryker made a series of little raids over the river (usually when the German advance had forgotten to keep back some spare Order Chips so that they could form square...). Like the guerrilleros, these lancers were a real nuisance, which is exactly what the Spanish commander was looking for. 

 

Here's a general view from behind the Spanish right flank at this stage of the action - at the far end, you can see the lancers being a nuisance, an activity in which they excelled.

 

...and now they've retreated again, behind the river.

 

Same moment, different view.

 

Now, as the guerrilleros do their best to cover the fords, the French bring forward some more cavalry - 26eme Dragons - to try to chase them away.

 

In the background, the dragoons have taken one of the fords. More of the irregulars prepare to meet them (note that the guerrilla units include priests, bagpipers, women, all sorts!) [Assortment of Qualiticast, SHQ, Falcata and HaT figures]

 

This is desperate defending now.

 

From the Spanish right, you can see the action is all at the far end...(!)

 

The dragoons now chased away the lancers, and the French had won the day.

 

Leval worked hard to keep bringing fresh units into the attack, but this final view shows how much punishment the Confederation boys had suffered (each white counter is 1/4 of the unit eliminated).

 

11.5 VPs to 4 sounds like a more comfortable victory than it felt like at the time! My compliments to Stryker and his army for putting up a gallant defence. An interesting game. It was an educational reminder of what the guerrillas are good at (being a nuisance, sniping at people, moving about quickly in difficult terrain) and what they are less good at (frontal combat with regulars, and sustaining heavy loss).

My sincere thanks to Stryker for an enjoyable game. I said I'd include part of the scenario notes, so here they are:

French Force (Marshal Victor)

 

From IV Corps

Division Leval

2e Nassau (2 bns), Régt de Frankfort (1), 4e Badois (2), 4e Hessois "Gross und Erbprinz" (2), 2 bns converged voltigeurs

Division Sebastiani

15e Ligne (2 bns), 66e Ligne (2), 70e Ligne (1), 82e Ligne (2), 86e Ligne (2), 2 bns converged voltigeurs

 

2 cos Art à Pied

 

Cavalry

From Division La Tour-Maubourg (from Reserve)

4e Dragons, 26e Dragons + 15 Chasseurs à Cheval (attached)

 

Total: 16 line bns [LN], 4 light bns [LT], 2 dragoons [HC], 1 light cavalry [LC], 2 foot batteries [FA]. (approx 15000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, 16 guns)

 

 

Spanish Army (advance guard under MdC Belvedere)

 

Division Del Parque

Africa (2 bns), Reina (2), combined grenadiers (1 - Africa, Reina), Ligero de Barbastro (1), Provinciales de Cordoba (1), Provinciales de Granada (1)

 

Division Portago

Burgos (2 bns), Irlanda (1), Guardias Wallonas (1), Ligero de Cataluña (1), Ligero de Campo Mayor (1)

 

2 foot batteries

 

Cavalry (Col Ramos da Silva)

Husares de Maria Luisa, Voluntarios de España, Lanceros de Carmona

 

Attached irregulars (Don Pedro de Gentusa)

4 "battalions" of irregular infantry raised by the Junta de Aragon.

 

Total: 7 line bns [LN], 1 bn grenadiers [GR], 1 bn foot guards [FG], 3 light bns [LT], 2 bns Provincial Militia [MI], 2 light cavalry {LC], 1 lancers [LA], 2 foot batteries [FA], 4 small units of irregulars [GU].

(approx 10400 infantry, 1000 cavalry, 12 guns + 1600 irregulars)

 

 

Scenario Narrative

It is April 1809. A number of well-known events from the Peninsular War have not happened, and as a result a French army is advancing from Madrid towards the Spanish Army of the Centre, which is commanded by Marcial de Campo Gregorio Garcia de Cuesta, and is camped in the region around Cuenca. Cuesta is 68 years old, and in poor health, and is in any case well-known for his difficulty in making decisions, and for concocting grandiose strategies which waste time and achieve little.

 

His army is in good shape, but his senior officers are mostly inexperienced and lacking in talent. The army is brave and well equipped, but many of the troops are new recruits, understanding of battlefield drill is generally weak. The particular weakness of this army is an inability to manoeuvre in action. Thus they will fight well enough in a defensive position, but are at a disadvantage if they are required to attack, or maintain any kind of effective fire while advancing. The Provincial Militia units are the worst, and the irregular "guerrilleros" provide by the local Junta are unreliable and usually incapable of any action more formal than a simple ambush.

 

[One odd quality that the Spanish soldiers have is that they do not expect to be victorious, but if defeated they will retreat from the field and be ready to fight again within a week or so. The French will constantly be embarrassed by this resilience. They are used to defeated enemies committing to a formal surrender, not dusting themselves off for the next round.]

 

The French army is under the command of Marshal Claude Victor-Perrin. On  the road to Cuenca, there is a crossing over the Rio Mezquino at the small town of Santiago Martir. The river is, for the most part, deep with steep banks, but at Santiago the road to Cuenca crosses the river over a good stone bridge - the only one for some leagues in either direction - and a couple of fords, and the river may be crossed for a mile or so on either side of the town (though not by artillery or wagons). The French are capable of constructing temporary bridges, but it will save them time if they can secure the crossings at Santiago.

 

Keen to secure the bridge before the Spaniards can destroy it, Marshal Victor himself leads an advanced guard - he has good quality German troops from the Confederation of the Rhine and veteran French troops of Sebastiani's IV Corps, and he has a small contingent of cavalry. His army is confident, since they are superior in most respects to the Spaniards, and their commanders are incomparably better. [The French despise the Spaniards, the Spaniards hate the French.]

 

Acting with uncharacteristic haste, Cuesta sends the Conde de Belvedere with a vanguard to seize Santiago before the French can get there, and to protect the river crossing, and so, when Victor arrives, he is surprised to find the little town and the hills beside it are already occupied by the enemy. Belvedere's force has been augmented by the addition of about 1600 irregular troops under the command of the little-known Don Pedro de Gentusa, a local land-owner - these irregular soldiers are fiercely patriotic, but erratic in performance - many of the "officers" being priests or community leaders.

Sorauren (French Left) - the Game

 Today Stryker and I played the game which I set up on Tuesday - as mentioned, this is a scenario lifted straight from the Commands & Colors user site. It gave us, not surprisingly, a close game. I was Marshal Soult, and Stryker played the role of Wellington, and we used Zoom. 

The game features no cavalry at all, and not much artillery, and the French, who have a decent advantage in numbers, have to set about a defending Allied army on a couple of ridges - seem at all familiar? There is a central (8-hex) hill in the centre of the table - occupying more of this hill than the enemy gets 1 extra Victory Point for the Allies, but it's worth 2 to the French. We agreed that 8 VPs for the win would give the French, with their greater numbers, a fair chance to wear the Allies down.

My troops started well - my intention was to have Maucune's Divn make a demonstration attack against the ridge on the Allied left (which did not offer bonus VPs), and push home a decisive offensive against the main hill in the centre, which was occupied initially by Spanish troops.

We used my Ramekin version of C&CN, which does away with the Command Cards (which makes the game possible to play via Zoom), and used the "strategic movement" add-on, whereby any unit which does not come within musket range of the enemy (2 hexes) during a turn may add 1 hex to its move - just the thing to allow those reserves to nip up to the front...

 

The French (on our right here) get their attacks under way - the one at the far end was supposed to be a demonstration, to keep the Allied left pinned there. To help with identification on a Zoom screen, we've used some large coloured counters - yellow for light infantry, red for Spanish troops. As usual, we are using white loss counters, since they show up well on Zoom.

 

The 24th Foot are installed in the only village, which was also worth a potential bonus VP to the French. They had a very quiet day, apart from some chaps firing cannons just next door.

 

The French attack on the central hill didn't go smoothly at all - in fact the feint on the right looked far more promising at this stage, which encouraged Soult to change his mind about the priorities, though he would probably have done better to concentrate his orders on bringing up reserves for the main attack.

 

This is the intended demonstration on the French right - the British 58th Foot are taking heavy losses from the French fire. Maucune fancies his chance here - he led a charmed life - while those around him fell in heaps, he escaped unharmed, though his laundry bill may have been substantial.

 

 

The main attack is getting bogged down - Soult really needs Reille and Lamartinière to bring those fresh units up from behind the stream.

 

 

A general view at this stage, from the French right. In the foreground, the British 58th Foot have gone, and the 79th are suffering as well. Maucune is incoherent with excitement.

 

 

Still not much success in the centre for the French - at this point the Allies have 5 units on the main hill, the French none at all, though they are working on it.

 

 

Soult's main problem - behind the stream, he has 5 completely fresh battalions - more than enough to win the battle if he could just get them up to the front [they were still there, still fresh, at the end...]

 

 

The French finally have a foothold on the main hill!

 

 

Now there is a glimpse of what might be - for the first time in the day, the French achieved parity on the main hill - 3 units each, so the Allies lost the VP which they had held throughout for controlling it. 

 

 

In the distance, the Great Scoreboard of History tells us (blurredly) that the score is 6 each - 8 needed for the win. Soult and his staff plan to get some reserves up, and finish off a classic victory.

 

 

No need to get excited - the British 88th Foot now routed the 1/50eme Ligne, which event also restored the Allied control of the hill, so the bonus VP came back into play. The French had eliminated 6 Allied units, the Allies had eliminated 7 French, and also got the extra point for the hill. Allied victory - 8-6. Soult was disappointed, of course, and will start work on his report...

I really enjoyed the game very much. My thanks, as ever, to Stryker for his uplifting enthusiasm and good humour, and my compliments on his very skilled defence. Next time, d'Hubert...

[Footnote: this game was not without some tension, as you will appreciate - at the end of each turn, Stryker would kindly remind me to take photos. After one such photo-shoot, I noticed that I had left my camera on the battlefield, and just for a moment I was concerned that it might have got into the last batch of pictures - only for a moment, mind, and there was a war on at the time.] 

 

***** Late Edit *****

Soult duly submitted his report to the Minister of War, and claimed all manner of misfortunes, not the least being the insubordinate and clueless behaviour of Reille and Maucune. By the time it reached the Emperor, who was in Saxony, and who was beginning to appreciate that the Sixth Coalition had worked out how to defeat him, it definitely did not improve his mood. In fact he was so upset that he had to get his surgeons to give him a rub-down with tripe and vinegar (traditional Corsican remedy for apoplexy).

In truth, Soult could have won our Sorauren game - there were a few occasions when he could reasonably have expected to win. The last few photos do show that his reserves were advancing at the end, but it was too late by this stage. At the point where the numbers of units on the central hill became equal, he only needed to march one more unit onto the hill to win the day - one more turn would have done it - two at the most.

The fundamental issue for C&CN - including its Ramekin cousin - is that the number of available orders is small each turn - it is variable, but it is always small, so that the commanders are encouraged to focus on real priorities. The turns are short, but they come round quickly. Soult used precious orders to attack the Allied left - his supposed diversionary attack; the problem was that it was fairly successful, and he felt obliged to continue to push, though in fact he could have held the diversion back, out of musket range, and still kept the enemy left pinned. With those extra few orders each turn, he could have brought his reserve up more quickly. Yes - quite so.

Even at the stage when the VP score was 5-all, 6-5, whatever, Soult's superiority in the centre was proportionally greater than it had been at the start, and he could actually have stopped the first attack, replaced the worn units with fresh ones, and started again - he should still have won. He was tantalised by the fact that his first attack seemed to be on the edge of success - for a long time - and frittered his orders away in trying to maintain some imagined momentum. Idiot.

***************************

 

Wargame on Thursday - Sorauren

 On Thursday, Stryker and I will play a Zoom-based Napoleonic game. This one is a scenario snappily entitled "Sorauren (French Left)", which neither of us has played before, and is taken straight from the commandsandcolors.net scenarios. It looks like a slugfest, and I noticed after it had been chosen that there is no cavalry on either side, so Stryker and I are going to be wondering how to spend the first 15 minutes of the game, if there are no cavalry units to throw away.

I spent this evening setting up the field, while listening to a football match which I shall not mention again. There is something quite liberating about using someone else's scenario; whatever happens, it will not be my fault. I think these things probably do matter. It is different from my usual scenarios, since the field is quite bare and there are far fewer units than I'm used to. I may learn something here.

 

Initial view from behind the Allied left flank

 

And from the Allied right

 

From behind the French left. There are bonus Victory Points for possession of the ridge just above the centre of the picture (with Spaniards on it). The French had better get cracking...

On the scenery front, I am delighted to announce that I've finally found Wellington's Tree (yes, it was in the wrong box), so it will be appearing, as is required by the terms and conditions of my franchise, and I was also delighted to find the missing top for one of my Iron Age Merit fir trees, this time in a box which has nothing to do with scenery at all. I have superglued the tree-top into place. 

Ha.

 More on Thursday - rural broadband permitting, we have a 10:00 start.

WSS: Beutelbach Playtest (via Zoom)

 

Ready for the off - counters and markers and cotton-wool smoke. Even some Lucozade.

 As planned, the playtest game went ahead on Friday - 10am kick-off.

Stryker and Goya arrived promptly (and remotely), and after some fiddling about with camera settings we got started. The revision to my WSS rules this time had been quite a large one, following on from what had been a pleasingly successful playtest back in December (or whenever it was), so we had quite a few new bits to assimilate. I, as umpire, had no choice to make a good fist of this, since the umpire is the guy who has to understand everything - especially if he is also the author. Nowhere to hide. Bright lights.

Let me say, straight away, that it was a very pleasant day - certainly I enjoyed the interaction and the company and all that - and we achieved a great deal on the rules workout. Overall, I am pleased, but am rather concerned that I presented my guests with a rather lengthier and more arduous experience than they might have been expecting! I can only praise their courage and good humour, and thank them once again!

Playtesting your own rules reminds me a little of the old home-brewed beer days (anyone remember them?) - the whole thing is driven by enthusiasm and good intentions, but it is also very easy to inflict on one's friends something which tastes ghastly and gives them terrible headaches, which is not a kind thing to do to anyone. I hasten to assure my gentle reader that our session was not so awful as this might suggest, but some of the things I learned about my new rule changes will require a day or two to digest. As is always the case, a lot of the problems unearthed are merely a question of tweaking the numbers to get a better balance, but I definitely got a few things wrong. Humility is required.

For a start, we had rather the rough end of circumstances - I had about 2 hours sleep the night before, because we had howling Easterlies rattling the slates here at Chateau Foy, with horizontal rain and sleet on the roof-windows, and at about 2:30am I had to get up to shut the gate, to prevent our garden chairs from rolling into the lane. So there was a lot of caffeine in my bloodstream by around 10am.

Next - Zoom. It is less than a year since I had no experience of remote gaming at all, and of course we have to be grateful for what is possible. Games via Zoom are a poor substitute for a proper face-to-face game, but they are a hell of a lot better than nothing at all, so it would be stupid to complain. On the other hand...

Well, on the other hand, I am one of that often-forgotten fringe of UK residents who do not live in a city. Our broadband arrives by radio transmission, believe it or not, and it is astonishingly good, considering, but in absolute terms it is a bit marginal for streaming two cameras simultaneously, especially when my locked-down neighbours are confined to barracks, and seem to spend their days home-schooling (via Google Classroom and similar) or just watching Netflix. The radio bit means that we are relying on line-of-sight contact (a familiar wargaming concept?) with a mast on a hill about 8 miles away, which also means that really wet weather can affect things adversely. [It also means that one of my neighbours can't understand why the broadband works at night, when he cannot see the hill where the transmitter is located - but this is quite another story...]

One way or another, our broadband is slow enough to make Zoom default to what it considers a manageable picture quality, which is not very exciting. Well, John Logie Baird might have been excited, but these days we expect high definition at all times, and don't you forget it. This means that, though I get to see the toy soldiers close up in the real world, my guest attendees have a real fog-of-war problem trying to see what's what, they get a very poor visual presentation and involvement level (they don't even get to roll their own dice!) and, of course, they also have to put up with hours of me charging about, talking too much and pointing at things. You may be getting a glimpse of why I was so grateful for their stamina on Friday! Zoom also kept hanging up on us - we had maybe 10 or a dozen instances when a broadband blip froze everything; I am getting surprisingly handy at recovering hangs, though on one occasion we lost the Zoom session completely, so I had to join again and admit everyone back in, but we also frequently lost time when someone's conversation would break up [the well-known Stammering Dalek Effect] and we had a lot of checking and repeating. I'm not going to say any more about Zoom, except that it occurred to me late last night that we could maybe get some improvement by shutting off the video links from the remote attendees - once we've said hello we don't need to see each other, as long as the battlefield views are working. It's a theory - I'll ask my son if it will help...

Righto - that's the excuses out of the way. The next bit has to be the things I got wrong. Last test game, I became aware of a few points in the game where the rules were vague - mostly about things like the exact timing of a morale check, or just what happens when a unit breaks from melee, so I had tightened this up, and had inserted some clarifying detail, including expanding the Turn Sequence to incorporate a specific Rallying Phase, between Activation and Movement. Great. In fact, it was a lot tighter, but I set up a big, encounter-type scenario, and the game was slow. I mean really slow. The melee rules worked a lot better (though they still need some tweaking), but it was all far too laborious for a big game. I also screwed up the formula for numbers of Order Chips, so that we had too many orders, which is like not having Activation at all. We had great, long player turns which must have been heavy going for the non-phasing player, who didn't even have any dice to roll.

OK - fair enough. All good - that's what a playtest is for - provided your friends are still speaking to you at the end!

The actual battle? Well, it took hours - much of which is down to lack of familiarity, of course, but it meant that we didn't finish. The target for a win was 8 Victory Points, and we had got to 4-all when we had to call it a day. As I say, I'm very happy that I learned a lot of good stuff, but one thing I learned is that the rules as they are now will not handle a big game, and I am really partial to big games, so some rethinking has started!

The armies seemed to spend a long time firing muskets at each other at 400 paces, which is not very effective, but there was a vigorous cavalry fight quite early on. The manoeuvre rules were not much of a problem - there seemed to be too many morale tests, considering not much was going on for most of the time. I can fix all that, but there are some fundamental issues which will need some surgery. That's OK too! I am pleased with what we achieved,  though as an actual game it was not the best.

I'll work on it!

Starting position, from the Imperial right flank - aggressive moves from the cavalry in the foreground...

...and from the opposite side, behind the Bavarian lines...

...just like the ECW all over again - the first cavalry clash was indecisive!

The Bavarian right flank was pretty quiet throughout - the battery on the hill was busy, but Goya seemed to have a great many 1s and 2s that he didn't get to roll last time out.

The cavalry get themselves sorted out, ready for another go. Note some dragoons sneaking through the wood on the left of the photo.

The Imperial forces, complete with battalion guns, came across the field to take the initiative, but a long range firefight ensued, which mostly didn't hit anyone, though a couple of units took fright

Bavarian artillery - working hard

Things were building up nicely, but we ran out of time before we reached the real crisis

General view, from the Imperial right, at the point at which we were forced to close. It'll be a lot better next time - trust me...