Solo Campaign - Week 4

General Clarke (Duc de Feltre), Minister of War in more jovial mood. Though he has a marshal's baton here, he was only made a marshal after the Bourbon restoration. Also of interest in the picture is the fact that he is obviously rehearsing his legendary after-dinner ventriloquism act - he used to say to the bust "What do you think of it so far?", and the bust would be seen to reply "Rubbish!". This was a great favourite of the Emperor's, and he would always laugh uproariously.

Week 04

Housekeeping

The 3D3 activation throws give Allies 8, French 6, so Allies have initiative, but choose to allow French to move first [in the spirit of Napoleon's comment about it being bad manners to interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake?].

Replacements – this is nearest weekend to 15^th of the month, so replacements may be diced for.

Anglo-Portuguese and French can replace missing blocks on a throw of 5 or 6; Spanish replace on 4, 5, 6; guerrilla forces replace on 3+.

Clauzel’s Divn (in Fr N) being In Supply, with new reinforcements and returns from hospital regained 1400 infantry, 120 cavalry and brought the foot battery back up to strength. Some reorganisation of battalions took place in 25e Leger, & 50e & 59e Ligne.

Espana (Sp B) recovered 600 line infantry and 120 cavalry.

Moves

French (6 allowed)

1 – M (Montbrun) march from Aranda to Valladolid – the infantry are already tired from forced marching, so this needs a test:

2D3 = 3 +2 (Montbrun’s rating) -1 (tired) -1 (winter conditions) = 3   which means that the march is completed, but the infantry arrive Tired & Demoralised.

Demoralisation requires each unit to be diced for – elite unit rolling 1 will lose a block to desertion & sickness, non-elite lose a block on 1 or 2. Foy’s infantry are veteran but not elites – losses are amazingly light, in fact – only the 2/69e lose a single block (200 men). Division is Tired, though.

2 – R (Casapalacios) marches from Segovia to Valladolid

3 – S (Jourdan/Joseph) march from Guadalajara to Madrid to replace the garrison there

4 – V (Maupoint, with cavalry of the Armee du Centre), march from Tudela via Burgos to Valladolid; first part of this is on rough roads, so requires a test:

2D3 = 5 +2 (Maupoint’s rating) -1 (brown road) -1 (winter conditions) = 5     which is OK

5 – W (Kleinwinkel) brings Pommeranian cavalry bde from Vitoria via Burgos to Valladolid

6 – Increase N (Marmont) by amalgamating with M (Montbrun), T (D’Armagnac, with Chasse’s Bde), R (Casapalacios), V (Maupoint) and W (Kleinwinkel)

[Intelligence step -

• Wellington aware that Fr army is consolidating, and that they are still at Valladolid, but has incomplete details]

Allies (8 allowed)

1 – A (Wellington) march 1 step from Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca

[Intelligence step –

• Both Br A (Wellington) and Fr N (Marmont) have plenty of cavalry – thus both commanders receive Fragmentary Report, but partisan information improves Wellington’s to a Partial Report – his Intelligence dice give a score of 4, which means he has a 100% accurate assessment of Marmont’s strength (now slightly greater than his own, though of course he cannot judge its accuracy)
• Wellington is now also aware that Marmont is no longer retreating]

Supplies

No supply problems, all LoC open and defended.

Contacts

None.

Narrative

Both Joseph and Marmont have received a very curt letter from Clarke, the Minister of War, pointing out that if Marmont continues to fall back to Burgos then the French will have only a few pockets of troops left in Castilla, which would fulfill most of the Allied victory criteria. Marmont, increasing his force as his supports arrive, is still nervous of his numerical inferiority, but he agrees to stand at Valladolid. Joseph and Jourdan, having sent most of the Armee du Centre to support Marmont, have moved the remainder into Madrid to keep control of the capital.

Wellington has intercepted copies of French communications, and, knowing that Marmont has orders to remain within Castilla, has advanced his main army to the area around Salamanca.

ECW 20mm Figure Comparison - contd - Big Chaz

Further to discussion of Charles I and his lack of inches - time to put the record straight.

Here is a contemporary illustration, showing that he was in fact a big strapping fellow - the tradition that he was vertically challenged is very obviously just anti-Royalist propaganda, as Ian claimed.

He is seen here with his dear children, B, C & D. Charles, of course, was the first Patron Royal of the Englishe Parley of Brevitists.


All forms of government ultimately are not going to succeed in trying to control or censor the Internet

Rupert Murdoch

ECW 20mm Figure Comparison

Here are figures from Irregular (their Restoration range), Hinton Hunt and Les Higgins. The figure marked with a carat on the right hand end is one of the first batch of LH officers, which are smaller.

Hinton Hunt probably very slightly larger than Higgins, but the hats and horses match - near enough for me, I think.

Sanity Check - The Case for a Little Diversification

Proverb: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”
Variation: “All play and no work makes Jack a rather confused boy”
Extension: “All the same kind of play is starting to make Jack a little weird”

Preamble 1 - Blogs in Winter

I've been aware for a little while that something in my life needs to change. Only a little, maybe, but it is certainly worth looking into. As I have said here before, this blog is invaluable to me - far more than I expected - partly because it has put me in touch with others with similar interests, and I can get insight from people who are kind enough to comment, but also because it gives me an opportunity to write down my own thoughts, which forces a structure and a level of cohesion on them (believe it or not) which might not normally be present. A chance, if you will, to get all my ducks in a row. So most of this is just self-indulgence. But you probably knew that.

There has never been any pretence that Prometheus is all about Napoleonic wargaming - that is just a front. For a start, I'd be very nervous about touting myself as an authority, and in any case I always intended to put out a few irrelevances - the odd blessed tangent. I am careful not to just unload a personal whinge diary on here - occasionally I do feel that something is so bloody awful that I have to add my small and rather squeaky voice to some imagined groundswell, but these outbursts ("ridiculous intemperance" - thanks, Graham, I still love that) are usually intended to be light-hearted. If I tell you about my dandelion extractor, or my fallen tree, or the circus car the garage lent me, it is only because I feel it might be amusing or otherwise faintly interesting. I started this thing off, secure in the knowledge that no-one gives a tinker's cuss what I think anyway, and find to my astonishment that there are 40-odd good people who are prepared to own up to the fact that they occasionally read my burblings. Whatever else that may do, it does remind me that I can't just publish any old dross that comes into my head.

Preamble 2 - The Hobby

I've collected soldiers and fought wargames for 40 years now - admittedly there was a long gap in the middle, when Real Life took a serious hold, but there are Napoleonic soldiers in The Cupboard which have been around since the beginning. My first ever Les Higgins unit is the 1st battalion of the 6e Leger, and they are still in there with all their accumulated mates, ready for action. I probably painted them about Christmas 1972.

The oldest of the Les Higgins Napoleonics - rebased and with new command figures, otherwise these date from 1972 or so

At various times I have also fought the American Civil War, the Roman difficulties in Britannia, and even some Wild West skirmish stuff. I stopped the ACW because the armies were badly done and gave me no satisfaction, and because I realised that the games had nothing to do with the actual ACW. Rather than start again, I passed the armies to my cousin on permanent loan – what you might call hedging my bets. When he died, many years later, his widow found them - the boxes had never been opened since he took them away. I agreed that she should just get rid of them - I am left with a lingering affection for the period, but I don't miss those armies at all.

My Ancients were Airfix and original Garrison 20mm - tidy little armies - by that time I was painting better, I had now dedicated my life to following the teachings of the WRG, and they were quite nicely organised. I never enjoyed the games as much as I would have liked. There is the fundamental difficulty of fighting an asymmetric war, of course - disciplined Empire troops against brave but disadvantaged hooligans. I recall that one of the more interesting phases of this came when I introduced unorthodox morale rules, which stated that Celtic units which fled the field might return, given suitable morale test results. So for a while the battles would reach a point where the Celtic commander would have very few warbands left in action, and a whole list of other units who had run away but might still return. This probably had some element of realism, but made for bewildering games, and we had to impose time limits! Another problem with the games was that they always seemed to develop into a huge grinding match - occasionally more than one such, but there was a lack of movement and/or variety in there which sometimes made the sessions seem like more labour than they were worth. I kept my armies for years, and occasionally dug them out for a battle, but 3 years ago I sold them to a nice chap in New Zealand to make more room for the Napoleonics. I haven't missed them, either, though I like to think they are happy.

The Western skirmish is a mystery - I can clearly remember painting up some rather nice 1/32 plastics, and I bought a set of rules, but I have no recollection of actually playing the game. I cannot even remember what happened to the figures. Ach, well.

So, in the end, I do the Peninsular War, and, because of the uniforms and the OOB of the troops I have available, I am committed to the 1811-1814 period of the PW. No problems with that - I still love the period, enjoy the games and the reading and the characters and the whole deal, and my armies are still getting bigger and bigger. My hobby, in part, has become dedicated to increasing the size of the armies, and thinking up new justifications for so doing. They are already several times bigger than I could fit onto the tabletop, so it's time for a sanity check.

I must mention that I have already had email exchanges on this subject with a few friends who have been very helpful, so if anyone recognises anything in this post which I have lifted straight out of one of those emails, you have my apologies and thanks in equal measure!

Preamble 3 - Life Changes

Though I seem to have difficulty coming to terms with the fact, I officially took early retirement some seven years ago. Now the context has changed again: I recently sold my little publishing business, and have greatly relished the increase in hobby time as a result. I've made good progress with organising my PW armies' infrastructure - transport and siege artillery - and some new supplies of Spaniards of various sorts and more time to get the lead mountain painted up all mean that my armies are growing even further. A very faint alarm bell. Where is this heading? At present I am working on the start of my new solo Peninsular campaign (which has taken a lot of time to get organised, but I am enjoying it), I am also still buying and cleaning-up and painting more of my PW soldiers, I am working somewhere in the background on my translation of Foy's "Vie Militaire", and for my bedtime reading I currently have Vol.1 (1809) of the Dickson Manuscripts. You know what? - I'm becoming weird. Somehow, when I was on holiday, I managed briefly to roam as far away as the 1809 unpleasantness in the Tyrol, but it's all a bit closed, isn’t it? I have a mass of books about the Wagram Campaign, the 1814 Campaign etc etc that I have been waiting to have time to read.

I feel I should get a change of scenery before I disappear up my own exhaust pipe. The removal of my part-time business has changed things - I now need a little diversification!

The Point of All This

I strongly fancy the English Civil War. I do not know a lot about it, but the spectacle, the geographical and cultural immediacy and the fact that it appears to be feasible with smallish armies are all appealing. But I have to do the groundwork properly, and go about it sensibly. A number of friends and confidantes have recommended books and rule sets, and given me their valuable thoughts on scales, figure ranges and general approaches to the subject, for which I am very grateful indeed. The books are arriving every day from AbeBooks and elsewhere, and I have a new ECW shelf in the upstairs bookcase. I have Terry Wise’s rules coming, and to date I have had a look at “Pike & Shot” (John Armatys), the “Perfect Captain” rules (which look fascinating, though it is almost impossible to find all the bits on the website), I have read Charlie Wesencraft’s “With Pike and Musket” (at last), I have the Airfix Guide, the Shire Publications “Discovering” booklet (which is largely a re-run of George Gush’s articles from Miniature Warfare in 1970), I have bought “Forlorn Hope”, which is a lavish production – I have all manner of rules here.

Rules Ancient & Modern

This obsession with rules before I understand the history looks a little like hitching up the horse behind the cart, but I have to get a feel for whether I would like the games, whether I could build up sensible small armies, whether they would be suitable to grow into bigger ones - all that. I also need to get an early feel for figure scales and BASING (oh Lord) – I do not wish to adopt a basing system which locks me into a rule set which is not going to work for me. I’ve done that before...

I have a gentle stream of general histories arriving. The ones I like best so far are by CV Wedgwood – she could actually write history as beautiful English, which is a trait which is less identifiable in some more recent work, I think. The history of the ECW, I regret to say, seems to have eluded me during both my education and my private study to date, so I have only a very casual grasp of it. Perhaps it clashed with double metalwork in the timetable? More likely I had my head jammed into some dark, obsessive place or other that prevented my taking note!

So I want to do this calmly and reasonably, and without derailing my Peninsular War activities or losing control of the rest of my life, but I do want to do it.

Availability of figures is critical - 15mm looked like an obvious choice, and figures are widely available on eBay, but the little guys lack personality for me – sorry about that. I have to actually care about the soldiers. I am pretty certain that 20mm is the way to go – my plan is to use Les Higgins' lovely 20mm, with Hinton Hunt and Kennington to plug gaps in the range and provide variety – I have been pleasantly surprised how compatible the figure sizes are.

I hope to get started in the Spring – to draw a line under the endless expansion of the Napoleonic armies and get started on a new area of interest. Thanks again to those who have helped me thus far – I believe the change will do me good, but one thing is for sure – if for some reason I never do get to fight ECW battles, it will still be a valuable addition to my education!

Solo Campaign - Week 3

Again, a week of marching and reorganising. It seems a good idea to bang a few of these weeks in quickly, before things get slowed down by more combats and maybe the odd siege.

Compromised by his "shameful" reverse at Corrales, Marmont has retreated along his supply line, back to Valladolid, aiming to consolidate with Montbrun's detached force (from his own army), plus various welcome reinforcements from the Armee du Centre.

French troops of Clauzel's Divn retreat through Salamanca - note early air-conditioning units in 1st floor windows...

As part of this regrouping, Montbrun's troops marched from Toledo to Aranda. This was no problem for the mounted troops or the horse artillery, but many of Foy's infantry completed the journey in poor shape. There is some suggestion that one night quartered in Madrid may have done little for the soldiers' stamina.

Wellington should still have a bit of a numerical advantage over Marmont's reinforced army, but he has remained at Ciudad Rodrigo, refusing to pursue the French army despite encouragement from his Spanish liaison officer to do so.

Marmont's miserable start to the campaign is not improved by the rumour that King Joseph himself may have decided to join him, to ensure that the troops seconded to him from the Armee du Centre are used to good effect.

Extract from the campaign diary follows:

Week 03

Contacts

None.

Narrative

Marmont, nervous of potentially superior Allied force at Ciudad Rodrigo, retires his own augmented force along his line of supply, back to Valladolid, where he is reinforced by the arrival of D’Armagnac, with Chassé’s German infantry. Casapalacios is marching up from Madrid, and has arrived at Segovia. Montbrun had a difficult forced march from Toledo, via Madrid to Aranda, which left the infantry very tired. Casapalacios and Montbrun have orders to head for Valladolid.

Wellington is aware that he has numerical advantage, but does not wish to move further into Spain while French hold Badajoz.

Allied siege train has arrived at Elvas.

[Chart was not available earlier - late edit]

Solo Campaign - Week 2

Just manoeuvring this week. Quick update.

Contacts

None.

Narrative

Marmont’s force at Salamanca resting after Battle of Corrales and subsequent retreat, now joined by St Paul’s Italian brigade (from Valladolid) and by Guye, with the King’s Guard and Treillard’s cavalry. Total strength around 16000. Guye’s force undertook hazardous forced march from Segovia to Salamanca – they were extremely lucky with the weather, and arrived in good order.

The dry weather also favoured the British army, advancing towards the Spanish border. In particular, Graham’s (1^st) and Clinton’s (6^th) Divisions marched from Abrantes to Ciudad Rodrigo – approx 135 miles – in 7 days, without significant problems.

Wellington, with his own and Hope’s contingents, now has some 34000 men at Ciudad Rodrigo – this is basically full Anglo-Portuguese army less Light Divn. Marmont knows he is there, but has few details. Because of civilian support, Wellington has a good knowledge of Marmont’s force, though he underestimates its strength somewhat.

Allied siege train continues its march inland, and has now reached Abrantes.

Marshal Soult has agreed to provide supplies to Badajoz from Sevilla, which will enable the Armee de Portugal to commit less troops to guarding the route from Madrid west along the Tagus.

Hooptedoodle #42 - Working Definition of a Crock

The plan for this evening is to get on with assembling some more siege guns, while listening to the Wolves vs Liverpool football match. Because of the very strange contractual arrangements which exist in England for the broadcasting of football, the only way I can achieve this tonight is to take my little netbook computer through to the living room, set it up next to my workdesk and listen to the live audio commentary provided by Liverpool FC's own website. I have my earphones ready, so as not to disturb my lady wife's viewing of more mainstream TV entertainment. Neat plan, eh?

Only in theory. My netbook is a humble little thing, and it only gets used a couple of times a month, which means that, when it gets switched on, the first thing that happens is that a fortnight's backlog of Windows updates and McAfee antivirus updates and Adobe updates and Java upgrades all get jammed in the revolving door. Given the sparse broadband service we get here, this is all enough to prevent anything sensible being available online for quite a long time - sometimes longer than the battery capacity of the computer. Yes, yes - you are right - I should have set everything up an hour or two earlier, but - you know what? - in this age of supposed digital convenience it's kind of infuriating that I should have to do that. Anyway, I attempt to get the commentary for the game, and wait a very, very long time. A quick squint at Windows Task Manager shows me that Internet Explorer is getting no processor time at all, because it's behind McAfee in the bloody queue - a situation which persists for another 10 minutes, at which point I shut the stupid thing down.

Death by security. Muttering gently, I give up on the siege guns for tonight, and retire to the trusty desktop computer in my office to listen to the match online. I wonder, in my unfocused way, what kind of a cataclysmic virus attack would be required to waste more time and cause more annoyance in total than McAfee does, drip by drip, every single day. Yes, I have to be grateful that my internet service provider gives me free use of McAfee's wonderful product, but sometimes it's hard to remember what a blessing this is. The one bright note is that at least I don't have Norton any more.

Like riding a bicycle through porridge.