The passes north of Seville were weekly held due to the detachments by the French to suppress the Spanish uprisings. La Romana marched southeast from Badajoz again, hoping to liberate Seville. His armies advance alerted the French. Soult issued orders to Mortier to concentrate his Corps and move to intercept the Spanish. When La Romana discovered that the French were in force his armed turned around and retreated northwest toward Badajoz via Zafra. Mortier’s 5^th Corps followed, with Marisy’s cavalry leading the persiut.

Setup

The terrain map was put together with brown wrapping paper – 80gsm 750mm x 50m Kraft Wrapping paper. Overlapping in the middle set to size 5’ by 4’ with side edge extra for strength of a few inches – glued with PVA / glue stick. Terrain map basic layout courtesy of Michael Hopper’s - Rise of Albion scenario book. So I sketched out to scale and painted on with Acrylic paints to designate the hills, roads, river / stream, (an adaption I chose from the lovely maps created by Colin in our 20mm campaigns – see Simon’s blog on http://www.servicerationdistributionhobby.blogspot.com ). Found with 15mm figures the 2D maps are the easiest and Michael’s maps and positions of terrain make all the difference in the battle. So cheap, easy to store, and if you are finished with it then environmentally easy to dispose of.

In this map the hills are gentle and the streams passable.

The basic scenario involves the French pushing in on the Spanish to suppress them.

I am playing the Spanish CinC La Romana, with La Carrera as General who has 5 Poor cavalry and a horse artillery, one of these cavalry is a small squadron (3 bases). Madden the other General with 3 Poor cavalry Portuguese. Alan is the French CinC Mortier, with General Marisey who has 2 Light cavalry (Hussar, Chasseur) and 2 medium cavalry (Dragoons). The Spanish allies setup first with just La Carrera on defend orders (Madden off table on attack orders arriving turn 1). The French who deploy second have Marisy on attack orders. You would get the full scenario details in Michael’s book - Rise of Albion.

Another enjoyable afternoon that was very close again.

When we reviewed the game it was suggested that the French could have split their attack 2 units to the West of the bridge and 2 to the East over the hill may have helped to hit the Spanish early and stop Madden immediately supporting them. Alan immediately realised that putting his horse artillery over the stream turn 3 then losing it to a breakthrough made a huge difference to his attack.