I've had this book for thirty years, give or take, I may have read it in the past or dipped into it, but a recent post in the Napoleon's Battles user group provided the necessary inspiration for me to read this book cover to cover.
It was first published in 1925 and reprinted in 1994. My copy had a stamp saying: "This book was warehouse damaged and is now being sold at a special price." Not sure what the damage was, but the book does have two flaws. The images included are very poor quality (the one on the cover is probably the best). This is a pity as the author went to some trouble to photograph the battlefields. Maybe the 1925 edition had better reproductions. However, more serious is that there are no maps at all. Given the subject of this book, I found it a serious disadvantage. Not to be at a loss, I searched my library for suitable books that might have maps as well as a Google search.
In the last and least likely book I found just what I was looking for:
The inspiring post was a scenario for the Battle of Orthez, February 27, 1814. It can be found here:
At this time it also lacked a map, and part of my reading was an attempt to work out what the terrain was like. The answer appears to be rolling hills with spurs and ravines. Perhaps significant at a battalion level, but perhaps less so at the brigade level represented by Napoleon's Battles (and at one inch is 100 yards).
While reading this book I was constantly distracted by ideas for a campaign and how to represent the various overarching aspects. These included:
The weather (obviously given the campaign season).
The need for Wellington to wait until funds arrived (and also to hold ports at which such ships could arrive in safety given the weather) noting also that funds were needed to pay the muleteers on which the Allied army depended for its transport.
The risk that Spain would come to a separate peace with France (which would make for a very interesting situation).
The need to keep the Portuguese happy (they were demanding their own army structure, rather than being just brigades attached to British divisions).
The bulk of the book is providing background (and importance of securing various places by siege or storm) and the manoeuvring leading to the battle. Hence my need for a map.
It took me a while to understand "the Gaves." It was not defined in the book, or in the map and it is not a word you can Google. My old French/English dictionary came to my rescue and provided the obvious answer: (n,m) torrent, mountain stream (in the Pyrenees). Just as an aside, the same word (n,f) means crop (of birds). I will go with the former meaning, but continuing the French lesson: le gave and la gave have two distinct meanings, but les gaves requires context.
The actual battle, like some others when Soult had not been forced to retire by being outflanked on his right), was initially hard fought with the Allied attacks held until they were able to break through the centre. There was then a successful rearguard, but it eventually fell apart leading to a rout, with the French saved by nightfall and lack of allied cavalry to lead an active pursuit. The terrain was both an aid and a hindrance.
My thinking had gone from trying to conceive of a Snappy Nappy style game to a more Scharnhorst (of the Blucher ruleset) pregame map manoeuvre. There is still the idea of being able to portrait various encounters with differently scaled rulesets, from something like Songs of Drums and Shakos for very small-scale skirmishes, through to Napoleon's Battles for the big battle. Other rules popular at the club (if I was to go that way) are Sharp Practice and General d'Armee.
At the very least I am now painting my way through a heap of Portuguese infantry, picking regiments based on locations I visited last year. The particular interest in this campaign is also aided by having visited the area as part of a battlefield tour in the mid 1990s (for which I must find my photos). The tour was more about Soult's counterattack across the Pyrenees in 1813.
Now I am reading A Guards Officer in the Peninsula.
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