Battles in the Peninsular

Following a request I am pleased to report two orders of battle for the Peninsular War have been uploaded over recent days. Specifically they are for the battles of Fuentes de Oñoro and Vitoria. Both are presented in Volley & Bayonet terms. While insufficient information is provided for a complete scenario I trust these articles are of use to readers. While neither battle needs much of an introduction it would be remiss of me not to provide a basic one.

At the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro (3–5 May 1811), the Anglo-Portuguese Army under Wellington checked an attempt by the French Army of Portugal under Marshal Masséna to relieve the besieged city of Almeida. Wellington fielded around 37, 000 troops while Masséna something in the vicinity of 45,000.

Fuentes de Oñoro by Turner

Two years later at the Battle of Vitoria (21 June 1813) an Allied Army of British, Portuguese and Spanish under Wellington, broke the French army under King Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain. Wellington’s army contained between 81,000 to 90,000 troops while the French fielded just under 60,000. The allied victory at Vitoria would eventually lead to victory in the Peninsular War.

The original orders of battle were compiled a number of years ago by Jeff Glasco. I have updated them to align with “Volley & Bayonet – Road to Glory”. You can find both orders of battle here.

Peninsular Towns

Last month has seen a little more time spent on terrain, including some towns for a long overdue Peninsular project.

My initial focus was on modelling some small poorer towns. Now, unfortunately in 6mm options are limited. Timecast Models have a good range of buildings suitable for Spain and Italy but unfortunately most, while true to scale, are far too large for my purposes. Regular readers will recall that I use half scale with 6mm miniatures for Volley and Bayonet. At half scale a town base measures just 3″ x 2″ which really isn’t much room. However, after a little fiddling I have found that two smaller buildings from Timecast will just fit on a town base and together I feel they provide a reasonable representation of a small Peninsular town.

Timecast Models with associated scenic accessories

Comparing the models to some art work in various military volumes, as well as photos of similar buildings today, they look adequate. Specifically, they are of single story and of generally of similar construction. For context below, are a couple of old buildings in the village of Arapiles, on the battlefield of Salamanca. Both the one on the left and right look likely to be of the period. Assuming this is the case that on the left seems a particularly good match.

The town of Arapiles provides some inspiration

For those familiar with Salamanca, Arapiles was the scene of fierce fighting. Fitting as Salamanca is one of the battlefields I am looking at using the town sector for. This photo was kindly supplied by Professor Emeritus Charles Esdaile and is reproduced here with permission.

In Volley & Bayonet such a town can hold a regiment or brigade. Most players place their buildings on a town sector template and remove a building to accommodate the garrison. However, I wanted to leave the buildings permanently on the base and thus retain the visuals.

A second village this time with a garrison

As a result the miniature regiment or brigade acting as the garrison is held off table and a spare infantry detachment is placed on the town base to show it is occupied. While I prefer to place a linear stand on the base the dimensions, in this case, simply do not allow for this.

Another view of the town from an alternate perspective

Some additional variety is added to the village models in the form of clutter. The carts shown here are from the Heroics & Ros while the barrels and sacks are from Perfect Six. The small tree on one village is from a now defunct manufacture.

In the coming weeks I will complete a couple of additional small towns before turning to some options to model larger towns, specifically some sectors that when combined can be used to represent Talavera.