Short break in Cartagena

If any of you have called by in the past few days you will have noticed that I have not been posting. Jan and I had a short break to Cartagena with a couple of friends. For those of you who have not been, its a beautiful city and well worth a visit. Just one big drawback, it appears to have no Napoleonic history at all!

You may know that it is is in the south east corner of Spain, and I realised it was quite far from the centre of attention as far as Napoleon's marshals and generals were concerned. I seem to remember that Soult had sent the occasional body of troops towards Murcia and Cartagena, but could not find anything of real note.

It is of course more famous for his ancient Roman history, but I thought that I would ask at the tourist information centre. I was quite disappointed to find that the very helpful assistant did not appear to have heard of Napoleon or the Peninsular War of 1807-1814. Certainly not in relation to Cartagena. The city does have an impressive and well preserved 18th century city wall (see photo above), but apparently it was not put to the test during the Peninsular War.

Worse, I was cut off from any contact with the Internet. We had rented a villa at the coast near Cartagena in an area called Mar Menor. This is "out of season" so there was not even a grocery shop open - let alone an Internet cafe. The villa did not even have TV, so not much chance of Internet . Jan was convinced that it would do me good to have a complete break from the Internet - I am not so sure.

Anyway I am back now and ready to get back to the Magdeburg PBEM campaign. My first action was to post the latest move in the Battle of Seehausen, which you can read by clicking label 11 on the right.

Second visit to Cuidad Rodrigo

We had enjoyed our first visit to Cuidad Rodrigo that we included it in our second visit to Portugal and Spain. This time we were on our own, and had more time to explore the town and the area where the allied guns were positioned to bombard the town.

This is the first new blog since I reorganised the Walking Napoleonic Battlefields blog. You can read about this visit by clicking on Portugal and Spain Two on the right

Walking Napoloenic Battlefields

When I started the blog I did not realise that it would be running out of space so quickly, but I now find that I have already used 75% of the storeage capacity for photographs on this blog. One of the main reasons is the large number of photographs on the Walking Napoleonic Battlefields blog. So I have started a new blog for all future reports. I have also taken the opportunity to move alll of the old ones, and arrange them in three seperate blogs as follows:

Walking Waterloo

Includes visits to:

Brussels

Ohain

Quatre Bras

Ligney

Plancenoit

La Haye Sainte

Hougoumont

The Left Flank

http://walkingwaterloo.blogspot.com/

Walking Portugal and Spain - One

A coach trip which included visits to:

Lisbon

Elvas and Fort Christoval

Badajoz

Albuera

Alcantara

The Coa

Fuentes de Onoro

Salamanca

Talavera

Madrid

http://walkingportugalandspain.blogspot.com/

Walking Portugal and Spain – Two

A return visit on our own to:

Torres Vedras

Vimiero

Obidos

Rolica

Poco Velho

More Fuentes de Onoro

http://morewalkingportugalandspain.blogspot.com/

Refighting Wellington's Battles

Our wargaming has suffered a little since I started the multi player PBEM campaign. Because Jan and I fight the campaign battles as a wargame, we have not done any of our own games for the past month. The campaign games have been very enjoyable, the more so because they were not designed by me. But it does mean that there can be gaps between wargames when the campaign is not providing any battles.

When we ran our own solo campaign we always had a battle waiting to be wargamed. Furthermore I could manipulate the campaign to provide the size of battle I wanted to wargame. Obviously this is not possible with a multi player campaign.

So I have been pondering what we might do to provide interesting non campaign wargames. Neither of us really like "one off games", we prefer to have a reason and something happening as a result of the outcome. Hence our interest in campaigns.

I was reading a blog last night, and it was about refighting Spanish Napleonic wargames as the anniversary comes up. To be honest I dismissed it at the time, as I have never seen a refight of an actual battle which was anything like the "real thing". And as we rely on just 20 scenery boards to produce all of our wargames it is even more difficult to produce a battlefield that looks anything the real one.

Then this morning whilst I was giving the pool its weekly clean I had my "brain wave". We will play "one off" wargames based on Wellington's battles. They will not make any attempt to be a refight of the actual battle, but will bear its name. The scenery will be similar to the real one, but the order of battle will not. In the past I have found that using historical orders of battle for Wellington's battles is very non productive. He tended to fight only on very favourable defensive ground, and only when he outnumbered his opponent. This would produce a very one sided, and not very enjoyable, wargame.

They will also be larger than usual wargames, using my 15mm figures. I tend to use 28mm for the campaign, and we both enjoy the size of game they provide. But it would be nice to have a different order of battle and allowance for cavalry reserves and grand batteries. Not that there will be any of those in the first game, which will be based on Rolica.

I will put a report on the blog and you can see for yourself what you think of the project.

New PBEM Campaign

I have started work on the next PBEM campaign, which will start when the current Magdeburg campaign comes to an end. I expect this will be in about two weeks.

The new campaign will also be set in 1813, and the objective will be to take the river Saale and the town of Halle.

There will be a number of differences from the previous campaign, including hidden movement.

If you would like to find out more click on PBEM 1813 Halle Campaign on the right. You will also find details of how to take part there.

Wargame Rules Amendment

Our rules normally allow only commander in chief to change corps orders. When a corps commander feels unable to follow his orders he is allowed to change them to Halt, but must then wait for new orders from the commander in chief.

This was designed to stop corps commanders reacting to something which happened in another part of the wargames table, and which he would not be able to do in real life. When this rule was adopted we normally fought larger wargames with four corps on the table.

Over recent months we have been fighting much smaller games, often with only one corps on the table. In these circumstances the corps commander had to be able to change his orders, and was allowed to do so for the use of one to three pips. A Gifted commander would require one pip, an Average one two pips and a Poor one three pips.

If the commander in chief is present during the battle he can still use his pips to change corps orders, thus allowing the corps commander to use all of his pips to fight his corps.

I have now amended the rules to show this amendment. The pages concerned are 2, 3 and 4.

Fuentes de Onoro - Again

In 1994 Jan and I paid our second visit to Fuentes de Onoro. Our first visit was three years earlier with Holts Battlefield Tours. This is one of those places you really want to be able to explore on your own. To stop and ponder and soak up the atmosphere. Like most Spanish villages it was deserted during both of our visits, and this just adds to the character of the place.

I also wanted to be able to explore the area behind the village, the Wellington ridge which was never used during the battle as the French attacks were all stopped in the village itself, though only just. The village is built on a hill, and at the very top of the village is the church. This was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting, and changed hands during the battle.

You can read about both of our visits by clicking on Walking Napoleonic Battlefields on the right, and then looking down the list of labels until you find Fuentes.

I have been a little late publishing the battlefields blog this week, because I have been trying to move it to a new blog. This whole blog business has taken on a life of its own since I started earlier this year. First I had just the one blog, this one. I soon found that I was running out of space, so I opened a new one for our move to Spain and our life here since then. In particular it has photos of our regular hill walking in this beautiful area. Not long ago I found I was still running out of space, so I opened a new blog for the campaign, both solo and PBEM. There are a lot of photographs of the wargames, so I need the extra capacity. Now I find that the battlefields blog is the problem. We are less than half way through the battlefield visits I want to cover, and already this blog is 75% full.

I have opened a new blog dedicated to the battlefield visits. I plan to reorganise the ones I have done already, to make them easier to find. But I am having trouble "googling" the blog. Not much point in opening a new one if no one can find it. Providing I can sort this problem out I will post details of the new link here shortly.