At the August meeting of the Northern Sydney Wargames Club we played the first public test run of a set of grand-tactical Napoleonic wargames rules that I have been working on in odd moments. I will post more on the rules themselves another time, but want to start with an after action report while the event is still fresh. I do have to say, though, that the rules are based closely on the Altar of Freedom ACW rules written by Greg Wagman. My rules, in homage to Greg's, are called Throne & Altar, with reference to the counter-revolutionary principles that animated the opposition to Revolutionary and Imperial France.
I give my thanks to the four players who commanded during the battle: John and Michael on the French side, Robert and newcomer Tony on the Spanish. The battle was hard-fought and tense, with serious plotting going on throughout. Although the scenario puts the French in a very difficult position (as they were historically) the outcome remained in the balance until remarkably late in the day.
With that brief introduction out of the way, on with the game, which represents the battle of Bailén in 1808. A French corps, of fairly indifferent quality and laden with the loot of the city of Cordoba, is trying to escape pursuit and get back to the safety of Madrid. Having marched all night, they are horrified to see, at dawn, Spanish troops blocking their way.
Dawn: Theodore von Reding's command had been getting ready to march, taking the westward road to descend on Dupont's rear at Andujar, when pickets reported Dupont himself coming up the road with his entire corps! Instead of falling into march order, the Spaniards deployed to block his way. Reding's division was placed on the hill to the north of the road, Coupigny's (weaker, and containing several regiments of militia) to the south. A battery of artillery guarded the end of each ridge, with interlocking arcs of fire covering the road that the French must surely force.
As the French approached, the Spanish saw no reason to move, having a leisurely breakfast in their lines as they watched the leading French elements deploying over the Rio Rumblar and milling about on the east bank.
This was Dupont's first time commanding an entire corps in battle, and he was having difficulty getting his subordinates to act in concert in an orderly fashion. Having been leading brigades and divisions since the revolution, though, he was more than capable of acting as traffic policeman. By sunrise he had a headquarters tent set up on the left bank of the river, and had directed his artillery to the north of the road and his leading division of infantry, under Barbou, to the south.
The olive groves lining the river bank were not a great impediment to troops on foot, but it would be troublesome to try to wrestle artillery through them. Better keep the guns close to the centre...
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| Just in shot to the left, notice the Hand of God, pointing the French on to glory (yes, that is a rather ambiguous expression, isn't it?) |
More French were across the river by 8:00, and traffic-cop Dupont directed them to their places in the line, Privé's cuirassiers in amongst the olives on the left, another division of infantry (Frère's) to the right. Any time now he would be ready to organise an attack, but he did not like the look of that defile. Altogether too much like the hopper of a mincing machine, with a grinding wheel on each ridge. He resolved to force his way around the right flank, but was not ready to let the Spanish know that just yet. Anyway, Vedel could not be far away. He was supposed to be here, at Bailén, and would surely show his face soon. Then it should be an easy matter to sweep these garlic-eating wogs out of the way(1). The leftmost Spanish brigade tentatively crept down the hill to see what he was up to, but by and large the Spaniards were content to await developments.
By 9:00 the baggage train had come up, the last of Dupont's main command to enter the battlefield, and the infantry was just about in position to advance. All that rustling about in the southern olives had attracted the attention of the Spanish, though, and Coupigny's division responded by forming a defensive line just behind the crest of the southern ridge (they had a vision of Wellington in a dream, I think).
Dupont's infantry, with the foot artillery covering their left flank, advanced bravely up the hill, drums beating the Pas de Charge, to meet the Spaniards, who had moved up to take position on the forward slope. Imagine the French dismay to see the enemy burst into wild cheers, throwing their hats in the air. From their hilltop they had spied a cloud of white dust rising from the Andujar road, announcing the approach of the rest of the Army of Andalusia. Brigadier Félix Jones, descendent of wild geese, was at their head, followed by the Regimiento de Cordoba, the contents of whose homes were filling Dupont's baggage wagons.
Dupont's heart sank - his stealthy escape the previous evening was for nothing, and now he was trapped between the two hostile forces. Even if he could slip away cross-country, to north or south, the local population would give his men little comfort. What he could do was get the wagons out of sight, so they dived off the highway and into the shelter of the olive groves.
The cavalry, rather than supporting the attack up the centre, now became the rearguard, Dupré's Chasseurs à Cheval blocking the exit from the bridge and the heavies positioning themselves to take in flank any Spaniards who might get across. The horse artillery, now the only French unit north of the road, hesitated between facing off Reding and covering the river crossing.
If Dupont had never led anything larger than a division into battle, though, his adversary Castaños had never led anything at all. While he fluffed about west of the Rumblar, Dupont's attack on the ridge went in, led by the marines of the Imperial Guard under Colonel René Artois, by far his best troops, and supported by Schramm's Swiss mercenary regiment.
Good they may have been, but there were only three companies of the guardsmen, and they were more sailors than soldiers. Fighting uphill against thousands of excited Spaniards, they were flung back down the slope toward the river (2). The wagon train, meanwhile, continued to bush-bash their way toward... anywhere not here.
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| Blue lines indicate Spanish musketry (should be red - sorry). |
Castaños, by midday, had got himself sorted out, sending Jones' troops to line the riverbank and pour fire into the chasseurs, softening them up for a charge by his heavy dragoons. The cuirassiers, waiting to charge the flank of any who ventured across the bridge, necessarily exposed their own flank to enfilading fire from the far bank, forcing them after a short time to recognise discretion as the better part of valour, and take what shelter they could find further back.
A fierce dispute broke out between Dupont and his artillery commander, Boulart. Boulart was all for rushing the horse artillery up to the riverbank and giving the Spaniards a whiff of grapeshot, but Dupont refused to turn the guns' back on Reding for such a risky throw of the dice.
On the ridge, though, things were going better. A second charge pushed the defenders back off the crest line, and opened the way for an advance on the Granada road, south of town. If the French could turn the flank, while holding the rear against Castaños, they may yet be able to escape their fate.
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| The dotted line shows the route taken by the French baggage train - off the highway, through the olive plantations and arroyos, and up the hill. With the enemy cleared from the ridge, they began to have thoughts of getting their wheels back on a proper road. |
By the early afternoon the southern ridge had become untenable for Coupigny, who started retiring his division down the back of the hill to the Granada road. Dupont, concentrating on the advance of his infantry, relied on the rearguard to take care of itself, and at first they did well. Jones' heavy cavalry rushed the bridge, but despite their superior weight and the firepower support of their infantry, the chasseurs saw them off smartly, sending them reeling back across the bridge in confusion, never to return.
A short while later, Boulart took advantage of Dupont's focus on the ridge to send in the horse artillery, which succeeded in breaking the left flank of the Spanish line on the river. For now the line was held, but the chasseurs were unable to maintain their position at the bridge in the face of increasingly intense harrassing fire. The Spanish were massing ominously on the far bank in preparation for another push.
The climax of the battle was reached at 2:00pm. Flushed with success, and with General Dupont right behind them to observe their triumph, the French infantry advanced down the eastern slope, catching and destroying one of Coupigny's brigades, and wheeling to threaten the town of Bailén itself.
Best of all, Vedel's division came into view, marching gaily down the la Carolina road with a song on their lips. It turned out later that they were fresh from a long and well-earned morning nap, which the general felt he could not refuse his tired men. When he and Dupont later, in captivity, exchanged notes on how they had each spent their time that morning, some harsh words were spoken.
It was to be just about the last good news for the French, though. A Spanish counterattack, in its turn, took both of Barbou's brigades in flank and destroyed one of them (the other extricated itself by the skin of its teeth). Despite the horse artillery's fine work on the riverbank, a fresh rush, led by Castaños' reserve cavalry, carried the bridge and captured the French headquarters. At the same time, his light infantry commander, Colonel de la Cruz, who had been off collecting some local irregulars to swell the ranks of his command, quietly slipped down through the olives from the northern hills to threaten the French left flank.
Reding, who had been busy occupying the town with his infantry, sent his heavy Caballería Farnesio to take in flank the French artillery on the southern ridge (3). It was a long ride, though, across an open saddle and up a steep hill, and Boulart was able to turn enough guns in time to see the charge off with a last-minute blast of canister. It was a near thing, though, and he, too, pulled back a respectful distance up the hill, lest a second charge finish the job.
Since holding the river was clearly a lost cause, the French light cavalry turned to see what contribution they could make in the centre. The Farnesio were on the road, recovering from their unsuccessful attack against the French guns, and with their flank exposed. What was a leader of light cavalry to do? Charge, naturally. It didn't work. The chasseurs had been working hard all day, after marching all night, and they just didn't have it in them to roll heavy cavalry, even taken flat-footed. They found themselves falling back, with the Spanish cavalry (now cross at them!) immediately to their front, and de la Cruz' geurrillas (4) behind them.
With Reding holding the town, Vedel hurried to the south to take Coupigny in the rear and take the pressure off Dupont. An hour or two earlier and this might have led to a great French victory, but now it was too little, too late. With Spanish troops pouring across the Rumblar bridge in the west, Coupigny's men managed to surround and destroy the remainder of Barbou's division, and it was all over. The French laid down their arms, and Dupont offered his sword, as in history the first Napoleonic corps commander to be resoundingly trounced by an enemy.
Final Remarks on the Game
We actually played two games during the day. The account above is of the second one, after the players had gained a bit of a grip on the rules. Since, somewhat to our surprise, all possible reinforcements made it onto the table, the battle ended up representing some 46,000 men and 66 guns, over an eighteen-square-mile battlefield and nine game hours. We knocked it over in three hours of game play that I think were enjoyed by all participants, even those who didn't have much to do, or at least few decisions to make. Future battles will be larger, so more people can be closely involved. I expect that the rules will scale well to larger battles. That is what they are designed to do, and although I have not yet played such large-scale battles, the developers of the ACW rules certainly have.
John immediately had visions of Quatre-Bras and Ligny on a single tabletop, which is ambitious but doable, and of Jena-Auerstedt (very ambitious, but with sufficient preparation we could maybe go there).
Geoff was kind enough to bring along his 10mm 7YW figures to stand on the unit cards to give more of the look of a figurine wargame. While I remain grateful for the offer, we played the first game with figures (using the printed unit cards as sabots) and the second (at Rob's urging) without. I am not at all sure that the first game looked any better, and it was certainly more fiddly. Having figures on dedicated bases would no doubt be easier, but I was pretty happy with the look of the game. Maybe that's just my old System 7 aesthetics coming out, but I thought the coloured unit counters looked good, and made it easy to interpret what was going on. They also have the advantage, of course, that large armies can be printed on demand... Who's for a campaign of Russia in 1812?
Notes
(1) Le pot appelle la bouilloire "noire".
(2) Crying "À l'eau! À l'eau!" (Wasn't there a TV series called something like that?)
(3) "There, Señor, there is your enemy! There are your guns!", or words to that effect, were no doubt spoken to their commander by the young Irish aide-de-camp who conveyed the order.
(4) The word would perhaps not be coined for another year, but the Spanish populace had already got some good practice in toward defining the kindly and welcoming activities it would refer to.
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