The Battle of Maria de Huerva, 1809

 On Wednesday night I hosted the Zoom game I mentioned in my previous post. The Jolly Broom Man (he himself) commanded the Spanish troops, in his role of Mariscal de Campo Blake, and I was Général de Division Gabriel Suchet, commanding some part of the III Corps, not far from Zaragoza.

JBM sportingly volunteered to command the Spanish troops, and I believe that he had the advantage of a few extra units to compensate for the unpredictable behaviour of his men. I reproduce the game map below; if you do a quick unit count and find that JBM did not, in fact, get any extra units, then please keep quiet about it. I meant to give him some. You know how it is.

 The scenario is pretty much lifted intact from the Commands & Colors scenario book, with some tweaking of numbers. It is close to the historical situation, though, since my toy armies don't quite match that part of the Peninsular War, in that year, the types of units are correct, but the individual regiment names mostly are not. The French army, however, does include troops from the Vistula (lancers and line infantry) and the famous 13e Cuirassiers, who really were present.

Since JBM does not have a set of the C&CN cards, we used my Ramekin add-on, which has a dice-based activation system. One feature of the scenario was that each army had a reserve of three line battalions, off the table, at the end of the road. These reserve troops would arrive on the field when their commander rolled a double-one on the activation dice for the second time; a double-one is not normally a welcome event, but in this case the French victory was greatly helped by the fact that Suchet's reserve arrived a few turns before Blake's.

"Then tell him to march faster..."

 

The Centre of the Spanish position; Roca has the front line, Lazan the second, and Blake (with the yellow border to his base) is waving his hat somewhere to the rear

7 Victory Points was the requirement for a win.

 

Situation at the start, seen from behind the French right flank

 

From the other end of the table, we can see the French right flank rushing forward in the distance

 

In this game, yellow counters denote light infantry (of which the Spaniards had a lot), red counters are elite units (there was only one, a Spanish grenadier battalion) and white counters are losses. 3 white counters will eliminate an artillery battery; all other units require 4. Here GdB Robert attacks the ridge on the Spanish left, the Lanciers de la Vistule attempting to strike terror into the light infantry on the end of the line

 

This was quite a bloody little passage. Each side lost one unit, the Spaniards withdrew a little, but the French were stopped. Honours about even - the score quickly became 2-2

 

The Cazadores de Barbastro had 3 hits already, and were shifted out of the firing line

 

The Spanish right includes the elite grenadier battalion, and both of the light cavalry units

 

Back on the Spanish left, Bonavente brings forward the two battalions of the Regto de Ordenes Militares

 

...who form square and chase away the lancers, who are also looking a bit wrecked now

 

The square black counter indicates - you guessed! - that the unit on the left is in square

 

A repeated feature of this battle was the effective use of "Combined Arms" attacks, in which cavalry or infantry carry out melee attacks with support from their artillery

 

The French, having rather run out steam on the right, start to develop their left

 

Ordenes Militares push forward from the ridge, though they thought better of this idea shortly afterwards

 

General Wathier advances on the French left. There was some brisk action, the main effect of which was to render the cavalry of both armies useless for the rest of the day (where have I heard this story before...?)

 

GdD Musnier started to move his infantry in the centre to the right (he was hoping very earnestly for his reserve troops to arrive, they say)

 

The Spaniards, on the far side of the valley take a reverse-slope position to protect themselves from the French artillery

 

Tales of glory - suddenly the Spanish grenadiers rush forward, shouting and singing. They were last seen heading along the road toward the monastery - they never came back...

 

Everything rather static in the centre and on the Spanish left

 

 

Featured unit - General Robert with a battalion of (ex Eric Knowles) Hinton Hunts (with SHQ command figures)

 

 

Another featured unit - last time I fought this battle, about 5 years ago, the Vistula Lancers just about won the day by themselves. This time it didn't go so well. C'est la Guerre. (Old Les Higgins figures - I reckon I painted these in about 1973!)

 

Blake is still sending messages of encouragement to his troops

 

And now, for the first time, we see the French reserve troops arriving, next to the monastery

 

From the far end of the field, you can see them surging forward in the distance

 

While, in the centre, the 4e Vistule and a battalion of the 6e Léger advance, with support from the artillery on their left

 

The 4e Vistule go in, uphill, with artillery giving Combined Arms support from across the valley. It was enough; the Spaniards had fought well, Blake manoeuvred his formations with skill, some great work was done to rally exhausted units, and their reserves had now also arrived, but the VP score was 7-3, and Suchet had won the day. It was hard work, though. These Spaniards don't know when they are licked, I can tell you...

 

 

Zoom Game Tomorrow; Set-Up

 It's been a few weeks since I did anything at all which was wargame-related, so I'm pleased to be hosting a Zoom game tomorrow.

Napoleonic. Peninsular. Based on the published Commands & Colors scenario for Maria de Huerva.

 I played this game 5 years ago, and I think it went quite well, so here we go again.

 Suchet's French against Blake's Spanish. In the interests of keeping it at least a little competitive, I've given Blake's army a few extra units. Each army also has a small reserve of 3 battalions, which may appear during the action.

 

Very plain field; a couple of ridges, a road and the monastery of Santa Fe in the right foreground. The French army is on the right here

 

From the other end of the table, looking from behind the French right flank

 

Some random shots of the initial set-up. Yellow counters denote light infantry; red counters (if you see any) denote elite troops - I think there are some Spanish grenadiers, that's about it

 

This photo is for Ian, since it features some Hinton Hunt French line troops...

 

...and this one's for me, since I have a great affection for Spanish infantry in round hats!

Hooptedoodle #467 - The Massacre of Murrayfield, 24th November 1951

 Another affectionate, though pointless, tale, prompted by an email exchange with a former work colleague this week.

The tale is one of sporting disaster; I have watched a few Rugby Union matches in my time, though I was never a fan - two of my older sons played rugby at school, so I had some partisan involvement for a while, but never a devout follower.

For one thing, I never fully understood the rules (not helped by constant change in that department), and I was alienated by the old militant amateurism of the sport. I knew two lads who were banned for life in their teens, because it was revealed they had had trials with (though never been paid by) professional soccer clubs, and I knew one who was banned because he had once taken part in the professional sprint race at Powderhall. Unforgiving. In those days, even a brief exposure to playing "the Other Code" - Rugby League rules - at school in the North of England, perhaps - could bring the sporting equivalent of a Papal Bull.

It all seems very odd nowadays, but the tradition was primarily one of being recognisably a gentleman - which had a lot to do with having attended the right schools, rather than necessarily being any good. Though, of course, if you were good as well that had its advantages.

The subject of my email discussion this week was a famous calamity for Scottish rugby. The South African Springboks visited the UK for a very successful tour in 1951, which included defeating the Scottish national team 44-0 at Murrayfield, a catastrophe which ultimately changed the history of the sport here, and remained a record margin of victory for a full international "Test" until 1986. [The effect was not dissimilar to the occasion when Ferenc Puskas and his soccer-playing chums from Hungary visited Wembley and humiliated England two years later. Shock. Horror.]

As it happens, I later met two of that losing Scottish rugby team. One was Oliver Turnbull, uncle of my first wife, who won his only two international caps at the advanced age of 32, both in 1951. Oliver was a great club player and local celebrity in the Scottish Borders; he captained a very good Kelso team. He was well past his playing days when I met him, and was a successful farmer near St Boswells.

This is the best picture I could find. Scotland team to play France in 1951 - Oliver Turnbull is in the middle of the front row, winning his first Scottish cap

 The other was at one time my boss in Edinburgh, Ian Thomson, a great character who in addition to his seven international rugby caps also had a successful career (amateur, of course) as a cricketer. Ian was surprisingly small for a sportsman, but he was a full-back of great speed and strength, and also a place-kicker of legendary repute - "a siege-gun left boot". I never saw him play - all before my time; he was some 11 years younger than Oliver.

On office nights out, Ian could be coaxed into telling us stories of his sporting days. He said that he didn't get as many international caps as he would have hoped, since he had a great rivalry with another contemporary full-back, Neil Cameron; Ian said he made a career out of being "the second best full-back in Scotland", but he also maintained that he owed a lot to having been the travelling reserve for the Springboks game. In those days, the reserve did not play unless one of the first XV was taken ill before the game - there was no concept of bringing on substitutes.

 

Ian Thomson, Heriots and Scotland, on the occasion of his first international, against Wales

After the Murrayfield debacle on 24th November, only five of that Scottish team ever played again for their country; Ian reckoned that he got a run in the team largely because he hadn't been on the field against the 'Boks. He had a nice, self-deprecating sense of humour anyway, so I am sure that he was selected on merit, but his theory is interesting.

My favourite recollection of his account of the 44-0 hammering is that he was sharing a room with Oliver at the team's hotel (which I think may have been the Caledonian, at the West End of Princes Street). The evening before the game, there was a bit of a session going on in the hotel bar, and Ian excused himself and went to bed. At about 2:30 am, according to Ian, he was woken by Oliver returning to the room, "well-refreshed and roaring". Oliver grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently, in his bed, yelling, "WE'RE GOING TO BLOODY MURDER THE BASTARDS, IAN - BLOODY MURDER THEM...".

And the rest, as they say, is history. Just Ian's affectionate story, of course, but it gives an interesting insight into the levels of athletic dedication these gentlemen brought to the honour of representing their country. I almost mentioned professionalism, but that would have been very inappropriate.

 

 

There is a legend of a disgruntled Scottish fan saying after the game, "We were lucky to get nil..."

Wee Ian died in 2014, aged 84. Uncle Oliver died in 2009, aged 89. Mighty characters, both of them.

ECW: The Battle of Meols Harcourt [Revisited]

 The end of this last week saw me involved in Zoom wargames on two consecutive evenings, which is unusual for me and was also very enjoyable. On Thursday I took part in one of Jon Freitag's superb extravaganzas [which you will find beautifully reported on Jon's blog here - thanks again, Jon] and on Friday I hosted a game of my own at which I had the same opponent - the Jolly Broom Man.

My own game was a return to the English Civil War; one objective was to try my Corporal John rules, which were developed to work with the War of Spanish Succession, with a few little tweaks to handle the ECW. JBM and I have been interested to try this for a while, to see if it might offer an improvement on my extant rules which I call CC_ECW, a name which is hardly poetic but gives an honest tribute to its origins.

In fact the two sets of rules are cousins, since one is based on Richard Borg's Command and Colors system and the other comes from Tricorne, which is Borg's application of his game system to the AWI. One distinctive feature of Corporal John is that musketry is subsumed into "Close Combat" as one of the unpleasant things which opposing units do to each other when adjacent, and the only explicit ranged combat which remains is artillery fire. This explanation is already sounding a bit dry, so I shall move on to the game itself.

I revamped a game which I had played years ago with my son (who was then 10, as I recall), which is set in my favourite context of the First War, before the New Model period removed much of the entertainment from the games, and also in the very amateurish North of England, my original home patch, for which I retain a great affection and for which (for the most part) I constructed my armies. The original edition of this game, as it happens, has a little resonance here because it was an early try-out of CC_ECW, which became my house ECW rules.

 

An old photo of my original game, in 2013, shows Alexander Rigby's Regt of Foot [P] standing guard in the village of Meols, which will have some echoes in the re-run

Thus my game on Friday was a re-run of the fictional Battle of Meols Harcourt, rather larger than the original (since the armies have grown in the interim), to see if Corporal John could handle it. JBM has offered me heroic support with Corporal John throughout its development, so I was delighted to have him on board again.

[Purists should approach what follows with a plentiful supply of salt, since our narrative may not sit comfortably with other, better-established versions of history, and some of the units and leaders present may well have still been in other places around the same time...]

 

Action at Meols Harcourt, some date in 1643

 

Back story and scenario notes

 

A Royalist force commanded by James Stanley, formerly known as Lord Strange (no, really) but who became the Earl of Derby on the recent death of his father, is on the march to secure the town of Preston, in Lancashire, for King Charles. The Earl has something of a problem with maps, and his army has made slow progress, though they have succeeded in stripping the countryside of horses and food as they went along.

 

Meanwhile, the Puritan commander of Parliamentary forces in the area, Sir William Brereton, leads a rescue force to relieve a reported Royalist blockade of Lancaster, but finds himself instead following the trail of wreckage which marks the passage of the Earl’s little army, in the general direction of Manchester. Something goes oddly wrong, and both generals are surprised to find that they are actually marching towards each other, and come face to face one misty Tuesday morning in farmland near the village of Meols Harcourt.

 

The village is on the land of the Twining family, a branch of the Heskeths, who live at nearby Harcourt Hall. There is a good bridge over a little river, Hassop Beck, which is otherwise fordable anyway. Hassop Beck may eventually run into the River Weaver – the Earl’s people aren’t sure.

 

So this is an encounter battle - no strategic objective beyond chasing the enemy away. Since the Royalists have the better army, they will probably take the offensive (and will move first). Brereton is gradually starting to believe that he cannot defeat the Royalists in the field, so he may in any case prefer to take a more passive role.

 

7 of the Royalist units are rated as Veterans; Parliament have no Veterans, but do have 6 newly-raised regiments rated as Raw. All Royalist cavalry are classed as Gallopers; Parliamentary cavalry are Trotters. The armies are very similar in composition (amazingly so, in fact). Each side has 20 combat units, so my standard algorithm involving the roll of 2D6 gave a requirement of 9 Victory Points for the win.

 

[It is a feature of the early years of the conflict in Lancashire that some prominent Royalists were exiled from the area - Tyldesley, Gerrard, Molyneux are examples - and subsequently raised significant regiments for the King, which went away to fight in other parts of the country. This did nothing to help the Royalist cause in Lancashire itself, but it does mean that if (as on Friday) these regiments return to their homelands they bring with them a level of experience and competence which the Parliamentary troops cannot match.] 

 

The river is just a water-splash, but has quite steep banks. Units fording it must stop in the river, but may carry on next turn. All units standing in the river or coming out of it must deduct 1 combat dice, and artillery may not fire while standing in the river. The (walled) Hall and the village count as built-up areas. There are two ploughed fields which count as standard enclosures in the rules. Monument Hill on the edge of the table is very rough terrain, and may not be entered. There are no points-scoring objectives on the field.

 

Here is our OOB for the day - the "unit number" simply helps me to find the correct soldiers in the ECW boxes!

 

 

Rules tweaks for Corporal John

 

I shall only briefly mention what had to be done to transplant the rules to a period 60 years earlier. Some weeding out of anachronistic Combat Cards was necessary (not many), and we had patches to cope with a few characteristics of the earlier war:

 

* The early war situation of "Galloper" cavalry vs "Trotters"

* Stand of Pike formation ("Hedgehogs") against horse

* Slightly altered role of dragoons

* Incorporating a Veteran / Trained / Raw classification into the Corporal John combat and Rally Check systems

* Similarly, named leaders would have different abilities

 

Let's get on, shall we?

In my usual manner, I shall hope that some kind of narrative emerges from the pictures and captions.

 

View from Parliament's right flank at the start. The village and Harcourt Hall are visible at the far end of the field. From this end, the groupings are Thomas Myddleton's horse, Henry Mainwaring's infantry and William Fairfax's horse on the left

 

After one turn, it can be seen that Brereton's (JBM's) troops are already advancing with unexpected vigour - we are left to assume that his rather more bellicose flank commanders had a major influence. On the right of the picture, we see the Earl of Derby's Royalist troops: Thomas Tyldesley with the horse on the left flank,  Henry Tillier with the main body of foot and Sir John Byron with the horse of the right

 

There is no question of John Byron backing down from a scrap, so a cavalry action between his troops and William Fairfax's began to shape up, and would continue all day

 

From Parliament's view, some of Mainwaring's infantry advance to the area around the village, while the remainder and Myddleton's horse move up towards the river in the distance

 

Ah yes - the Beck. This was specified as very moderate obstacle, and crossing a water-splash in one's own time is simple enough, but troops facing each other across the stream were understandably reluctant to fight their way across - early attempts by the Parliamentarians did not go well, so this area became something of a stalemate - a lot of glaring and swearing went on, but very little decisive action

 

Still the cavalry action on the Royalists' right, beyond the village and the Hall, is brewing up...

 

By an odd quirk of fate, Rigby's foot find themselves back in the village, as they had been in the first edition of the game, 11 years ago. Apart from the white "loss" counters [white shows up on Zoom far better than the regulation black], you may also see that Raw units are marked with yellow counters and Veterans with red - everyone else is Trained. If you see a purple counter (and you probably won't) then that denotes dragoons. Blue counters mark activated units, and shouldn't really appear in end-of-turn photos unless I've omitted to tidy them away [you can't get the staff, you know]

 

Attempts are made on the Parliament right to cross the river - these went badly enough to discourage much more of the same

 

 

Back at the cavalry fight on the other flank, the rule introduced to give Gallopers an advantage against non-Galloper cavalry at the start of an individual melee suddenly produced a remarkable result - the tweak allowed the Gallopers in such a situation to count crossed sabres as a hit - here is a photo to commemorate Marcus Trevor's RoH, with John Byron leading them in person, decisively overwhelming Shuttleworth's Lancashire Horse...

 

...and as the Parliamentary left wing fell back (William Fairfax was seriously wounded at this point), the flank was suddenly open

 

Rather late in the day, now that it was becoming obvious that the situation on the river was not going to change, the Royalists brought up more of their veteran foot in the centre

 

Sir William Brereton, in his best Puritan hat and accompanied by his trusty groom, Hector Smallpiece, suddenly realises that the Royalist right wing cavalry is now in his rear

 

Having held the village against allcomers through the day, Rigby's boys emerged into the open and were attacked by Lord Molyneux's horse, and, since their retreat was cut off, surrendered to a man, which made the VP count 9-3 in favour of the King's men, Lord Derby notwithstanding. The day was won

 

The position at the end - still with a stalemate on the river (no-one dared to attempt to cross, but neither side could risk giving the enemy an opportunity to cross in peace), the Royalists have taken the area around the village, and are heavily involved in the centre. The Earl of Derby, still firmly rooted on his baseline, is notified that his side have won. Since it is God's will, he is not surprised

 

As a closing shot, here is Tyldesley's cavalry, next to the river on the Royalist left flank, looking ready and able, but never in action throughout the day

Rules: brief footnote - the Scrabble rule

I did not intend to get into this, but there was a classic instance of something which is always a possibility in C&C-type games, which prompted some useful discussion afterwards and which will probably generate a rule change.

I describe this from my own viewpoint on the table, but the situation must have been the same for both.

Because Lord Derby was rated as something of a pudding as a commander, my Royalist hand of Command Cards consisted only of 5 cards. Since the river situation meant that we were both stuck in a stalemate on what was my left flank, I had a gradual build-up of cards allowing me to activate units on my left - eventually I had 4 such cards in my hand of 5.

Now the standard rules of Commands & Colors would allow me to play one of my Advance Left (or whatever) cards and just do nothing, which would give me a fresh card, but pressures elsewhere on the table made me reluctant to do this, and in any case such an action would make it very clear that I was trying to lose "Left" cards.

Our discussion was around what in the past I have called a Scrabble Turn. As I recall, in Scrabble you may trade in a letter tile for a fresh one from the bag if you are stuck. My first-sketch application of such a rule to Corporal John (or any of its relatives) is as follows:

(1) On any turn, either player may choose to discard a card from his hand - unseen - and take a fresh one. This replaces his turn, and the game proceeds.

(2) Alternatively, he may ask his opponent if he may change more than one card; the opponent may allow this, or may refuse (thus restricting him to a single card), or may negotiate for a different number of cards. 

(3) If a number greater than one is agreed, the active player may change his cards, and his opponent may also immediately exchange the same number of cards (without further negotiation) from his hand instead of ordering units, and the game continues.

And that's quite enough about that.

Once again my thanks to JBM for his company, enthusiasm and wisdom, especially concerning the ECW.