18 May 1813 – North Spain – Day 8
Soult orders reorganisation and
resupply
10th army hold
Torrelavega
11th army reorganise and
resupply
12th army occupy Aguilar
Wellington orders 4th
Spanish retreat to Llanes district
1st army occupy Comillas
4th army retreat to
Cabezon
2nd army retreat to Camon
Comment
Wellington is
concerned that 4th Spanish army is isolated and surrounded at
Reinosa
He orders them
to retire to Cabezon in Llanes district
He is unaware
that 11th French army is in no condition to undertake any offensive
operations
In fact all
three French armies are suffering supply problems and have considerable battle
casualties
The retreat of
the French armies into Santander district has eased their supply problems
Spanish
guerrillas are not allowed to attack if there is a French corps in an adjacent
square
However earlier
guerrilla success has left all depots short of supplies.
The campaign
rules state that each corps can have a maximum of four days supplies
For six corps
this is a total of 24 days supplies.
In addition the
combined depots must carry another 6 days supplies, making a total of 30 days
If the total of
both corps and depots is less than 30 days, the balance is delivered to the
main depot
For the French
army this is Santander.
At present each
depot holds only one day’s supplies, with Santander holding 14 days
To resupply a
corps must be within one days march (three squares) of a depot
You will see
from the map that only 21st corps is within three squares of
Santander
To resupply the
other five corps must either move closer to Santander
Or supplies must
be moved from Santander to an appropriate depot
You will also
see from the map that 7 and 8 guerrilla brigades are close to Santander
They can attack
any convoy moving to either Torrelavega or Medina
19th
corps has four days supplies and 20th corps three days
21st
corps has two days supplies and 22nd corps also two days
23rd
corps has only one day’s supplies and 24th corps also one day
It is easy to
see why Wellington thinks that 4th Spanish army is in great danger
But in face
Soult’s army is in danger of a complete breakdown of supplies
This would lead
to each corps losing 10% of one brigade each day they are out of supply
To avoid this
Soult would have to order a redeployment of all six corps to within one day’s
march of Santander
Clearly the
campaign has run its course
The French have
failed to take and hold the campaign objective of Llanes
Consequently Wellington has won the Llanes campaign phase.
Thistlebarrow,
ReplyDeleteI’m not surprised at this result, as both sides seem to have fought and manoeuvred each other into a stalemate position. Wellington may appear to have been a bit too cautious in not ignoring the weakness of 4th Spanish Army and pushing on, but with the French falling back along their lines of supply to Santander, it could easily ended up with a battle that would have done the Allies cause harm.
All the best,
Bob
Hi Bob
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment
The campaign has simply run out of steam. It would have taken three or four campaign days to regroup and organise the supply. Even then the French would have no chance of achieving the campaign objective of taking Llanes.
This was a very frustrating campaign, because the Spanish performed so well and the French proved unable to take advantage of their early opportunities.
But as always I learned much more from a campaign that went badly than I would have from one which went according to plan.
Usually this results in an amendment to either the campaign or wargames rules. Not in this case, because both worked well throughout. It was simply better than average luck for the Spanish, and worse than average for the French.
In fact this proved to me how well the rules work even when things go wrong.
regards
Paul