Talavera 208 - French and British Limber Teams and French Supply Wagons

French Artillery Train

Following on from my previous post about French Horse Artillery, I decided to carry on with the momentum of completing the French and British orders of battle for Talavera by completing the extra limber teams required to convert my three model gun batteries into two model gun batteries that better reflect the footprint of the six to eight guns they represent.

The French artillery arm at Talavera numbered 66 guns in total, 36 with I Corps and 30 with IVth Corps and the guns needed a lot of limbers, ammunition caissons. support and replacement vehicles to service those guns and these models are designed to represent that support on the table.

The great aspect of using Carnage & Glory is that the rules really encourage the players to treat their gun crews with the respect that the historical commanders were forced to; namely repeat firing over several turns will fatigue the gunners and reduce their effectiveness and lethality.

The wise commander in such a large game, planned to be fought over two days, is thus forced to think about keeping some of his batteries in reserve, fresh and ready to replace batteries forced to retire and recover their fatigue.

These models will thus help to indicate those guns limbered or moving to and from the reserve and will really add to the overall look of the game.

Not only that but their completion marks the lasts models required to represent the French army in the afternoon attack scenario.

French Supply Train Drivers 

I am very lucky to have family who are only to happy to support my balmy hobby and contribute to the collection with the odd model or two at Xmas and birthdays.

This Xmas was no different and I was gifted with some great models from Blue Moon, Warmodelling and AB representing the rear area troops together with casualty figures that really help add extra drama to any game.

The Blue Moon range of support and supply wagons are a great addition to the 18mm offerings available and fill a gap that has needed filling for some while.

I couldn't resist working on a pack of these models whilst doing the limber teams and soon discovered the need to get my scratch building head on to organise horse teams and drivers for this pair of French supply wagons.

Come on you 18mm range designers, please can we have some nice drivers and other seated troops to adorn models like these.

I much prefer AB horses to any other range and so decided to use some of the left over ones from my foot limber teams to stand in for my supply wagon teams.

The drivers took a little more work to manufacture, with the decision to use a couple of spare Xan French legere. These marching infantry had their muskets removed together with their legs and back packs, then having new putty sculpted legs added to have them seated on the wagons.

I then decided to create some covered loads using bits of cork tile cut up and stuck together, covered in toilet paper lightly soaked in watered down PVA and then painted when dried.

I haven't stuck the loads in and so I can have empty wagons or different loads with barrels and boxes uncovered.

The Supply Train drivers were a vital support to the French in Spain who found it harder and harder to allow their troops to so readily loot the countryside as they tended to do elsewhere in Europe.

The wagons, whilst adding extra eye candy to the Talavera game will also come in handy for some future guerrilla ambush games and those pursuit scenarios where the French are tasked with getting their stores and ill-gotten booty away in a hurry.

The traces and driving reins were created using my trusty three ply fuse wire which allows the look of draped reins and taught traces to be easily modelled.

The original 2CV - French army style - G. Rava

British Royal Artillery Drivers

And finally the British order of battle is now finished with the completion of these two foot limber teams, using the excellent AB range of drivers and limbers.

At the start of the Revolutionary War, British artillery was still being drawn by civilian drivers with all the problems that system caused when expecting guns to be moved under fire.

It was not until September 1794 that the Corps of Captains, Commissaries and Drivers was established replacing civilians with soldiers and attaching teams of drivers to the artillery brigades; this military formation was found unsatisfactory and was replaced in 1801 by the Corps of Gunner Drivers itself replaced in 1806 by  Corps of Royal Artillery Drivers.

The new Corps reported directly to the Board of Ordnance that commanded the artillery but was a separate entity to the artillery.

The look of the drivers was very similar to the horse gun crews, with their Tarleton helmets and light cavalry style of dress and sabres.

If you are planning to add traces to your teams and get information about harness colours, which were black leather fittings for British teams, you really need a good reference source and I found Franklin's book on British artillery such a reference. 

No video clip with this post as work has taken over in recent weeks and I am off this weekend to enjoy the fun at Crusade 2017 in Penarth, my first show of the new year - post to follow.

So if you have any questions about the models shown, drop me a post on the blog, and I will endeavour to answer them.

So the Next Talavera 208 posts will be back looking at the final formation of troops, namely General Bassecourt's 5th Spanish Infantry Division and starting with the 1st Regiment of Spanish Royal Marines.

References consulted for this post
British Napoleonic Field Artillery - C. E. Franklin
Talavera 1809 Chartrand & Turner - Osprey Campaign

Time Commanders, BBC Four - "It's Wargames Jim, but not as we know it!"

This week Tom and I had some "boy time" with the television as Carolyn was out late one evening and so we decided to watch the second episode, the Battle of Waterloo, of the three part series of last year's Time Commanders shown here in the UK on BBC 4 with the first episode aired on the 12th December.

We had already seen the first programme looking at the Battle of Zama as featured in the preview publicity shot in the header and the third episode is focused on the Battle of Chalons and the Hun invasion of the western Roman empire.

This series follows on from the two previous runs in 2003 and 2005 with obvious improvements in the game engine from a modified version of Total War which both Tom and Will are familiar with. For those unfamiliar with the series I have attached a link to give an overview of the programme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Commanders

This third series has prompted comment from not only my wargaming circle but also friends who know my interests but are not wargamers themselves, interested in the series and my thoughts about it.

It was these latter conversations that caused me to think about writing this post and trying to draw out some principles that come to mind when considering TV shows like this.

My first experience of TV attempting to bring wargaming to the wider public was "Battlegound" produced by Tyne Tees television in 1978 presented by dear old Edward Woodward and Peter Gilder, featuring Peter's terrain and 28mm figures.

I had the pleasure of watching this series at Peter's home in Pickering and playing on the same terrain and with those figures in the early days of his wargame holiday centre.

Edward Woodward sets the scene in "Battleground"

The series can still be viewed on YouTube and remains for me a favourite for many reasons including a huge dollop of nostalgia.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdAPAly2sNIUdymRCXrz3gImY388My00J

This programme really combined the best aspects of our hobby, namely its presentation of the games and the tactics of the given period with a look at the interplay between the different arms combined with the aesthetics of the figures and terrain designed to capture the look of the period under discussion.

The gamers took time to explain their planned moves as they made them with the thinking that underpinned what they were doing and what they hoped would happen, all designed to keep the observer informed about the key question - why did you do that?

Peter Gilder in action on "Battleground"

With Battleground the casual viewer would generally come away with an understanding of why the battle was fought and what the respective armies looked like and an idea of why it was fought in the manner it was.

Battleground clearly shows its age and vintage with little attention to the issues of command and control and the inclusion of dry ice and cigar smoke battle effects, but I love it still.

Then we had the attempt at bringing "Kriegspiel" to our televisions with the "Game of War" series hosted by Angela Rippon, accompanied by Iain Dickie, Artur Harman and Dr Paddy Griffith.

http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Game_of_War

The interesting aspect about this show was that the guest commanders were serving or former British military commanders who would have certainly had and displayed an understanding of the military concepts of the period they were gaming. It was really revealing to see their natural instincts in attack and defence displayed during the command phases prior to the contacts being adjudicated on the table top by the "wargame experts".

Not only that, but they brought their awareness of the likely issues their subordinates would be facing in the close up and personal battle on the maps and revealed their ideas for coping with those factors, which gave great insight into the world of the senior military commander from what ever period.

Game of War on Channel 4

However television is an audio-visual medium and I felt the series fell down in the rather serious dry approach taken by the presenters and the total lack of aesthetics that Kriegspiel is with two dimensional maps and boring looking meeples and counters - blah! 

I found the show both disappointing and fascinating at the same time but it wasn't a success running just one series of three programmes in the 1990's. I have some old video copies of the show in my loft but am not keen on revisiting them.

Thus we find ourselves in the twenty-first century with all that modern technology can bring to our TV screens to show us war as a game which gives us "Time Commanders".

So where have we arrived at with this show? I am afraid on balance, not in a good place from my perspective.

The structure of the show is to bring opposing teams together to command the respective forces in a major battle from history. These teams of three people have one thing in common in that they share a hobby or interest and perversely have no interest or commitment to understanding military history. So for example the Waterloo programme featured a team of aquarium workers versus a team of competitive archers. This should tell you a lot about where this 'show' is coming from.

They then go through a crash-course in basic military tactics centred around the weaponry of the chosen period in some sort of attempt to give them an idea on how to use the various military formations within their command.

Whilst getting their heads around all this new information about a particular weapon and its use they then get to practice their team work and leadership skills by having one of their number oversee the commands issued by their two subordinates to the game controllers sat at their computer consoles busily controlling the computer graphics presented to 'Joe Public'.

During this process we are treated to a form of 'cod-history' from two historical experts who must be embarrassed at what they are doing but with fingers tightly crossed and understanding that this is show business. This historical commentary is accompanied by a more interesting display of examples of the recreated weaponry of the period and how it was used, together with its likely effects on the enemy - perhaps the most interesting aspect of the show.

Like some wargame rules in our hobby, I get what Time Commanders is and what it isn't. It is a game, it is a show. It is not a study of the battle it purports to portray and it tells the casual viewer nothing of substance about it, that they wouldn't get from a half descent book. What it is is a great example of moving pretty pictures of battle scenes interspersed with a game show where the contestants struggle to cooperate as a team playing the game under a modicum of guidance.

My frustration is that like some wargame rules, this show is masked with this veneer of historical reference so, it seems, to give it an unwarranted quasi-educational merit that it quite clearly doesn't have.

What do I mean? 

For example, the show takes time to pick a certain warrior type and the weapon they carried and demonstrate with the help of the re-enactors how it would have been used and its effects. This as I said is very interesting, and to my mind the best part of the show, but these warriors and their weapons did not operate in isolation and were required to cooperate with other arms to support their activities and were better used against certain enemy troop types than others or in more favourable terrain than others. Without a thorough examination of these aspects it is little wonder that our naive commanders have absolutely no clue as the best use of these troops, much to the glee of the experts who happily point out to the TV audience what they should have done.

The Napoleonic period and the troop types of cavalry, infantry and artillery are the classic rock, scissor and paper comparison between the different arms. The period is marked by the fact that the French under Napoleon's guidance really mastered this concept of all arms co-operation to multiply their effects on the battlefield. 

In the period of Zama through to Waterloo, army size multiplied beyond recognition from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands requiring a command structure to be able to cope with these massive armies lumbering onto the battlefield.

So did Time Commanders build any of these concepts into its recreation of Waterloo? Was there any guidance on all arms cooperation? Was there any discussion about how realistic it was for our game commanders to issue commands one to the other, as they watched their battle unfold on the screen, compared to how it was actually done by Wellington, Blucher and Napoleon. No of course not. Was there any consideration of command groupings, brigades, divisions, corps, reserves? No and again no. So the commanders can be forgiven for just throwing forward any formation they fancied without any consideration of how they were commanded and what formations would support another in any given attack or defence.

In summary the casual observer would have learnt nothing about Waterloo or the way the armies operated in that period from this display of computer gaming.

Like I say, I do get that this is entertainment, and not education, but I find myself objecting to the way it is wrapped up in this pseudo-educational history format.

The so called Waterloo game ended up with all three armies just massing in one final rugby scrum in a hollow somewhere on the allied left flank with the commanders throwing in their senior generals in some bizarre desperate bid to win. Close run it certainly was, any relation to the Battle of Waterloo it wasn't. 

Then to add final insult to injury the so called historical explanation of what actually happened included a description of "just like in our game, there was a desperate race to occupy the key farmhouses on the front of the allied line". Really! Really!! Colonel MacDonald, his brave Guardsmen and the men of the Kings German Legion who spent the night occupying both Hougomont and La Haye Sainte must have been heaving a huge heavenly sigh of despair and lamenting the lack of historical rigour displayed, not giving them of their commanders the credit for recognising the importance of the terrain features and their preparedness for their defence - even though the KGL burnt the barn doors for fire wood overnight and the Guards left their back gate open.

If you pick up a level of frustration in my comment it centres around the fact that a friend of mine who has a very good knowledge of military history and affairs being an ex Captain in the Royal Marines, but has difficulty understanding what I and others get out of historical wargaming asked me about this Waterloo programme.

Like me he spotted the historical inaccuracies and implausibilities and asked me if that was what historical wargaming was about. At the time I hadn't seen this episode and was only basing my comments on the Zama episode that had less glaring faults but many of them similar to the Waterloo show.

That's more like it - Waterloo as it should be

In my view historical wargaming, done well, really helps shed insight into warfare and the great battles of history that other media struggle to portray in quite the same way. The hobby has a great potential to help educate the casual and not so casual enquirer into military history as well as all the other aesthetics covered on this blog. The games I and many others play bear no relation to Time Commanders other than they are based on history.

Surely it is not beyond the whit of TV producers in this age of amazing technological advances that we can't do better than what has gone before and produce an exciting, informative and entertaining explanation and recreation of the great battles of history that gives insights as never before and would encourage future generations to get involved in this fantastic hobby.

Well, I am glad I have got that off my chest. It's been bubbling away in my mind since Wednesday night.

Your comments welcome. I can't be the only one who finds this stuff slightly aggravating, or perhaps you take another view and see the positives of more historical wargaming on mainstream TV attracting people into military history. You see even I can see that aspect, even though the one outlined above outweighs it for me.

Vimeiro Hill - Over the Hills Scenario

Yesterday, I got time to play my second game of Over the Hills, a set of rules for Napoleonics I reviewed back in October last year, and played at the first meeting of 2017 at the Devon Wargames Group

Hard fighting in Vimeiro yesterday at the DWG

Over the Hills - Napoleonic Rules Play-test and Review

I have posted an AAR of our game on the DWG club blog and describe some additions to my game kit for using the rules including the first run out with my Force Morale Cards shown in my annual review.

Devon Wargames Group Vimeiro Hill AAR

In addition I played the rules using my C&G range sticks together with angle of fire gauge as I prefer working with paces and the angles of fire used in C&G as opposed to firing straight ahead as offered in OTH. The changes played seamlessly and I can see OTH working very well alongside C&G as an alternative to using the computer.

That said my poor old brain had to work harder than when playing C&G and I missed the extra granularity that it offers, but it's nice to have an alternative for some of my "dyed in the wool bone roller friends".

I have put up the scenario plus copies of the Force Morale Cards in "My Scenarios" under Vimeiro Hill Scenario - Over the Hills which should link you through to a zip file that you can download.

Talavera 208 - French Horse Artillery

It was the great artillery reformer Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval who designed the standardised artillery equipments that served the French army so well during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

Lt. General Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval,
French artillery officer and engineer
1715 - 1789

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Vaquette_de_Gribeauval

The principle of standardisation is an accepted norm in military circles today, but in the eighteenth century it was a truly revolutionary concept.

It was however the increased mobility that the Gribeauval system granted to French artillery forces that really delighted the gunners with the removal of the lavish ornamentation that previously encrusted gun barrels, he managed to pare down the weight by up to 45% in some examples. Even with a slightly heavier more robustly built carriage the weight saving still amounted to about 20% over older systems.

Horse artillery crew in action c1807 using the prolong rope attached to the limber - Print after Dorel

Alongside these improvements were added a robust design of carriage with iron instead of wooden axles and with added ropes and levers the guns could very often be fired whilst still attached to the limber and horse teams, but without the need to move the gun on and off the limber each time, very useful when conducting a fighting retreat or a rapid movement to close range. Whilst the design of the split trail and rounded base prevented the recoil of the gun embedding the trail into soft ground.

The development of horse artillery equipped with the lightest versions of the Gribeauval four and later six pounder guns together with crews mounted and able to ride alongside the drivers and limber teams enabled artillery to accompany cavalry brigades and complete the combined arms teams that characterised the mobility of Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare over that of the preceding century. With enemy infantry forced to form square by the approach of enemy cavalry, the horse artillery could move in rapidly to blast the closed up infantry and break up their defence.

French horse artillery gunner and driver

The video clip below really illustrates well the Gribeauval artillery system used by the French horse and foot artillery teams. This demonstration group are dressed as foot artillery gunners but the orders and crew placements together with the mobility provided by the drivers and team give a good idea as to how these artillery groups would have operated and the speed that they could be brought into and out of action. 

The cannon were categorised according to the weight of shot they used so originally the pieces consisted of the 4, 8 and 12 pounder brass cannon alongside 6 inch bore howitzers, designed to lob shells at targets behind objects or defences and very useful for setting light to defended buildings.

The foot batteries referred to as "division"in the French army were organised around six guns of the same type and two howitzers, very often using the heavier 8lbr and 12lbr guns and the horse batteries around four guns, usually the 4lbr alongside two howitzers.

It normally took eight specialist artillerymen to serve all calibre's of gun and thirteen to crew a 6" howitzer including two bombardiers to set fuses if shells were being used.

The effective or battle ranges for the different gun models are quoted from Guibert's "Essai Generale de la Tactique - 1803".

Detail of French Horse Artillerymen - Rousselot

In 1801, following complaints from French general officers about the performance of the 4lbr and 8lbr pieces versus enemy 6lbr guns, General Marmont, the Inspector General of Artillery was prompted to write to First Consul Bonaparte.

The principle issues were that the 4lbr gun was a poor weapon when using case shot and the 8lbr gun was too heavy as a medium field piece compared to enemy 6lbrs and that alongside other reforms to the Gribeauval system a 6lbr gun should be produced which would be more effective than the 4lbr and equally mobile and was almost the equal of the 8lbr in fire-power.

Napoleon, an artillery officer himself, always took a close interest in his artillery arm, even to the point of positioning the odd gun or two himself

This report provoked the interest of Napoleon, a gunner by profession himself, to set up a Commission of General Officers on the 29th December 1801 to evaluate the situation and to come forward with proposals.

On the 2nd May 1803 the commission proposed what became known as the Year XI System which among other recommendations proposed the replacement of the 4lbr field gun with a 6lbr long and short barrelled gun.

Of all the reforms under the Year XI System it was arguably the introduction of the 6lbr gun that had the most impact, given that the new system was not universally well received with the principle complaint that much ammunition and resources were already in place for the original Gribeauval pieces.

Year XI would continue to be a 'bone of contention' up to 1810 when Napoleon set up another review that confirmed that the 6lbr gun would be the principle reform to come out of the Year XI System condemning the other recommendations as largely unsuitable.

The rough difficult terrain encountered in the Peninsula persuaded the gunners to use lighter pieces than would normally be the case in the rest of Europe and so the foot batteries would often leave the 12lbr guns in the park preferring the 8lbr and later 6lbr long guns for use in the Spanish interior.

It was the 6lbr that became the principle weapon of the horse artillery, although it was not uncommon to still see the 4lbr in service particularly with allied contingents with, for example, the artillery elements in the German Division being issued 4lbrs as replacements for their own guns on arrival at Bayonne in 1808 before their march into Spain.

Detail of French Drivers - Rousselot

Alongside the Gribeauval reforms the other major influence on the effectiveness of French artillery in general and horse artillery in particular was the professionalising and incorporation of the drivers into a military corps as opposed to the civilian drivers of the previous century.

Civilian drivers were  all militarised on 3rd January 1800 as the "Artillery Train", ensuring that horse teams would enter a battle and that ammunition wagons would be kept close at hand to resupply the guns.

Each gun would have its own team together with two reserve caissons of ammunition carrying about one-hundred and seventy rounds per gun.

In addition to the guns and caissons each battery would include one spare gun carriage and team, one mobile forge and one vehicle for tools and spare parts. Thus there might be around twenty vehicles supporting a typical horse battery.

Interestingly there was, until 1809, the year of Talavera, no French drill manual for manoeuvring their gun batteries, and the one there was was an unofficial publication
  "Projet d'Ordonnance Provisoire pour l'Artillerie, Contenant l'Ecole et les MaManoeuvres d'une Batterie de Campagne"
published by General Officers following the Battle of Wagram that year.

It was not until the more common use of multiple massed batteries as one of the key French tactics that French gunners felt the need to issue a drill manual for individual batteries, but still without official principles for using guns in mass formations.

The French concentrated the bulk of their forty plus pieces at Talavera into a mass battery atop the Cerro de Cascajal designed to support their main attack against the British line on the opposite Cerro de Medellin and in the flatter ground lining the bank of the Portina stream. An Ensign in the 3rd Guards noted the ferocity of the bombardment.

"a tremendous cannonade - shots and shells were falling in every direction - but none of the enemy were to be seen  - the men were all lying in their ranks, and except at the very spot were a shot or shell fell, there was not the least motion - I have seen men killed in the ranks by cannon shot - those immediately around the spot would remove the mutilated corpse to the rear, they would then lie down as if nothing had occurred and remain in the ranks, steady as before." 

Paradoxically horse artillery, so useful in the very forefront of battle, was also ideal in the reserve role; ready to be committed by the General who spotted a weakness in the enemy line. I suspect that will be the role of these guns in the forthcoming games

My French horse artillery are composed of figures from the AB range supplied by Fighting 15's with a link to them in the side column.

The colour combination I mention in the video clip for painting my French equipments consist of:

Base Coat - 75% Russian Uniform, 25% Black

First Highlight - Russian Uniform

Second Highlight - 75% Russian Uniform, 25% Off White

All colours are Vajello.

If you have enjoyed viewing and reading this post then add to your enjoyment by popping over to the "Talavera 208 Just Giving" page using the link below and make any contribution you care to, towards a great cause, Combat Stress, and enjoy the warm feeling that will come knowing you have added to the good in the world; not to mention the thrill when you see these models in action this year, and a message from me thanking you for your support. 

Cheers all 

JJ

Just Giving - Talavera208

Sources used in the creation of this post:

French Artillery - Patrick Griffith, Almark

French Napoleonic Artillery - Micheal Head, Almark

Napoleon's Guns 1792-1815 (1) Field Artillery - Rene Chartrand, Ray Hutchins, Osprey Vanguard

Artillery Equipments of the Napoleonic Wars - Terence Wise, Richard Hook, Osprey Men at Arms

Painting War 2, Napoleonic French Army Rafael Perez

Talavera Wellington's First Victory in Spain - Andrew W Field