Talavera Campaign – British Order of Battle

1 British corps

One of the most important principles of our 1813 campaign is that all ten armies should be evenly balanced in their combat effectiveness to ensure that both wargamers have a level playing field.  This is to say that neither side should have a wargame army that is very likely to win most, in not all, wargames.

There are five campaign areas in the 1813 campaign.   In northern Europe there are three French, one Prussian, one Russian and one Austrian.   By 1813 all of these armies were more or less equal.   The Russian campaign had destroyed the “old” French army.   Most of their replacements were newly recruited conscripts.   I have used artistic licence to redress the lack of French cavalry.   So all six armies have equal numbers of infantry, cavalry and artillery.  And each have a national strength and weakness.   For example the Russians have good artillery but poor skirmishers.

2 British corps

However Spain is a problem if I want to maintain any semblance of historical ability.   Wellington won all of his formal field battles.   The Spanish lost all of theirs.   There are lots of reasons why this was so, and none of them help me to achieve balanced wargame armies.  

Wellington’s army was Anglo-Portuguese.   By 1813 his regular Portuguese brigades were considered good enough to fight alongside his British brigades.   However in my campaign they are mostly C class.   There is one Portuguese brigade and three British brigades in each corps.   The British are either A or B class.

This would normally be sufficient to balance the combat ability of the French and British corps.   However in Spain the French also have the added burden of their supply lines and Spanish guerrilla activity.   This requires the French to detach brigades to guard their lines of supply.   It also disrupts their ability to maintain a constant supply to their forward corps, and can cause them to abandon their advance to sort out the rear area.   This is all historically correct, but it makes it difficult for the French to win a campaign based on wargames rather than real battles.

3 Spanish corps

The British and Spanish each have three armies of three corps each.

As an experiment I have removed one British corps in each army, and replaced it with a Spanish corps.   Two infantry brigades are B class, the remaining two are C. All four are C class firing and skirmish.  The cavalry and artillery are also C class, but they have 12 pdr guns which are superior to most of the French.

I think I can get away with this on historical grounds.   In the latter part of the Peninsular War Wellington was appointed as Commander in Chief of the Spanish armies.   He found this more of a disadvantage than an asset.   In fact his Spanish troops behaved so badly when he invaded France in 1814 that he sent them back into Spain!     

The intention is that the Spanish corps will be a permanent problem for the British wargamer.   It will be one third of his wargame army, far too big to be ignored.  It will have to fill one third of the battle line in each battle, and will always be a weak spot.  

However I don’t want the British player to lose every battle, so we will have to see whether this is too much of a disadvantage.   We can only do so by play testing it on the table.   By the end of the Talavera campaign we should be able to confirm whether it is a temporary error or should be a permanent feature.