"Vimiero 1808 - Carnage & Glory II" Topic

Hi all,

I have posted a report of the game we ran yesterday recreating the Battle of Vimiero at an approximate scale of 1:30. With 20,000 Allied troops and 13,000 French troops, that's a lot of metal soldiers. I know I painted them!

The game played very well and the results were very similar to the actual events, all be it, that I allowed our General Juno to overcome his predecessors mistake by making use of his Divisional Generals!! thus achieving a more coordinated French attack.

If you would like to read how events turned out, then just follow the link to JJ's

jjwargames.blogspot.co.uk

Jonathan

Fantastic as usual !!

Francisco

Very Impressive, thanks!

Excellent!!

Does C&C limit the number of skirmishers that can be deployed?

Lovely stuff – wonderful to see your project come to fruition so nicely.

Regards

@McLaddie – I think he uses Carnage & Glory rather than Command & Colors

Hello JJ!

By God man, well done. Looks like a classic game that I know I would have enjoyed as well. It's seems by your comments that your more then satisfied with your year long effort.

Our next kick at this is planned for Nov. 3rd. It will be very interesting to see how version two is played out.

Best regards,

Glenn

C&C, C&G… hopefully he knows what I mean…

Hi Guys,
Thanks for the kind comments, I spent most of Sunday writing the AAR and then putting the toys away.

I see Vimiero very much as a start point for putting a Peninsular War collection together. With the forces that were present, it is a simple matter of gradually adding other units to allow other scenarios to be played through the war. Hence Corunna is next up in December after the second Vimiero game in November and then Oporto next spring.

Oporto will see the addition of further Portuguese units and Talavera will see the start off a Spanish collection. Thus as the war grew in intensity and the different troops involved developed, so will my collection as I follow a time line of games. Well that's the plan! With a Spanish collection I want to go back to 1808 and look at the Spanish side of the war, but that is for later.

McLaddie,
Hi, the skirmish screens in C&G II are handled slightly differently depending on whether you are using British or French. In the game pics you will see the British have amalgamated their light companies into small battalions that operate as such about 150 paces ahead of their brigades. They can deploy a percentage of their number 200 paces further forward to act as a skirmish screen. The system knows the total strength of these battalions and will automatically calculate what percentage of men will be used (normally about 10-15%). As these British Light battalions are all light infantry they can operate in extended order, and so it will look as seen with a line of skirmish bases representing the battalion supports in extended order and then their screen up to 200 paces further forward. The system tells you the frontage in paces of the extended order line.

For the French, they operate their skirmishers by individual battalion and they simply represent the screen 200 paces forward of the columns that support them. There is a debate as to when and if the French adopted a similar tactic to the British and amalgamated the Voltigeurs into combined battalions, and I may well try that tactic in future scenarios and offer it up as an option to the French player. The skirmish game is modelled very well in that the casualties they inflict usually over a turn or two before the clash of the main troops are small in number, but because these guys are picking off Officers and NCOs they have a significant effect on pre-contact morale, and the British riflemen get an extra round of skirmish fire with their added range.

The limit to the skirmishers is based on the strength of the units they are drawn from, and, particularly with the British, their brigade light battalions will often have additional elements added in the form of their riflemen, although at Vimiero the rifles fought in their own brigade.

The skirmish battle range is taken from the formed unit providing the screen to the formed target and thus the figures in the screen are purely there as an indicator to the players as to if the range allows skirmish combat to occur. The system knows the strength of opposing screens and thus automatically calculates the damage inflicted.

Hope that helps

Grand looking game – thanks for posting!

carojon:

Yes, that does help. Thanks. The reason I asked is because Fergason, Hil and Anstruther had a lot of light companies out and the French had taken all their voltigeurs and combined them with the grenadiers in the elite battalions. That meant that the French skirmishers that drove back the British in the center were all taken from center companies.
When you add up the numbers, there weren't many French companies left to form columns….and still have enough to drive back the British skirmishers.

Bill

Hi Bill,
I am not aware of any reference indicating the Voltigeurs were combined with the grenadier battalions, and I haven't modelled it that way. With twelve battalions at Vimiero the four battalions of 2,000 grenadiers only work out at 160 men per company, but there were other battalions who would have contributed, allowing for the slight excess.

The French at Vimiero were, as far as I know, organised on the pre 1808 nine company organisation and the strength of the battalions very often over 1,000 men would indicate that. Thus I have my units still with their Voltigeurs companies attached.

Jonathan

Gad that is spelndid!

Well done.

carojon:

No biggee, just the reason I asked about the rules.

Well, too often historians simply call the French elite battalions 'grenadiers'. At the time of Vimiero, that was the French practice, combining the grenadiers and voltigeurs. It was done in the 1805 through 1807 campaigns and the "grenadier divisions' in 1809 had the same composition.

A simple head count confirms this for Vimiero. The grenadier battalions couldn't have been the size they were if only combining the grenadier companies. They'd be half the given numbers.

Bill

Bill,

Is that a definite? Because I thought that the Grenadier Bns at Vimiero were formed only from the Grenadier/Carabinier companies of all the native French units (18 Bns) in Junot's Corps. At a strength of c.100 men per company that should work out for the 2000 or so Grenadiers in the reserve?

Regards

Actually, there aren't enough Carabinier companies to fill out the battalions. [i.e. equal numbers of to match the grenadiers--the Carabinier companies were the grenadiers of the Legere battalions] It was common to use the voltigeurs simply because both Ligne and Legere could contribute the same type of companies.

Taking all the grenadiers from both Junot's army and all the other available battalions to create the four battalions of 'grenadiers, @500 apiece, you need between 24 and 36 companies. That depends on whether you believe the reforms going from nine to six companies had been achieved in Spain by the time of Vimiero--the numbers are very high for six company battalions--even at 100 per company, that is only six hundred for a battlion [The grenadier battalions were probably six companies strong.], and most regular ligne and legere battalion counts are twice that. That would *suggest* nine company battalions at 100 per company, you can only fill out @ half of the Gren. battalions with grenadiers and carabiniers.

Oman states that the four battalions were formed from all the battalions in Portugual at the time, but doesn't explain how that comes to 24 companies or more. There were only 19 French battalions in Portugual which might have contributed, and they all didn't, because seven [IIRC] were provisional battalions without grenadiers.

The wonders of number counting. I can provide more detail if you want.

Bill

But if the Grenadier Bns were each only 500-550 strong, surely that implies a maximum of 24 coys and possibly less?

Regards

Given that the sources for the grenadier battalions are a bit sketchy on precise strengths I have worked on them being only composed of Grenadiers and Carabiniers based on the Army of Portugal setting out with 22 battalions. Even with battalions on garrison duty the grenadiers are likely to have stayed together whatever, as they formed the reserve division of the army. From the strength of Junot's battalions they would appear to be still using the nine company organisation.

I've taken the book strength for a grenadier company as 123 but actual averages at about 80 men, 22 x 80 thus 1760 for the 4 battalions .

The strength of some of the battalions was well over 1,000 men so some companies would have possibly brought the total higher. Therefore 500 grenadiers in each battalion seemed about right.

The grenadier/carabinier companies have to come from the battalions. As I said, the provisional regiments didn't have grenadier companies, AND as Oman says, the non-French battalions such as the Swiss did not provide grenadiers, so we are looking at around 12 to 14 grenadier/carabinier companies available. 4 X 6 to 9 companies comes to 24 to 36 companies for the four battalionis.

What I need to do is pull out the sources so I can give you the full skinny.

Bill

I didn't think there were any Provisional Regiments in Junot's Corps? link

Oman gives 18 French battalions (not including any foreign Bns) which would probably be enough. If there had been 36 coys OTOH, that looks on the face of it too strong for the actual strength of those Grenadier Bns.

Regards

Jonathan,

Very nice game. Nice write up in the blog. Doing my Vimiero battle Sunday using C&G and your set up.

Adam

Good looking battlefield and toys.

Looks like you got the balance right in game terms whatever the outcome of the skirmishers discussion is! Hope it was fun.

Best wishes, Jeremy

Hi Adam, thank you, looking forward to seeing how your game goes.

Following the two games I have planned, I will update the scenario, as there are imbalances that I have spotted and want to smooth out. I will be trying those fixes next month.

Re your game, take that as a "health warning" on the current scenario, as it will change.

Regards Jonathan

I didn't think there were any Provisional Regiments in Junot's Corps? link

Oman gives 18 French battalions (not including any foreign Bns) which would probably be enough. If there had been 36 coys OTOH, that looks on the face of it too strong for the actual strength of those Grenadier Bns.

The OOB Oman gives on p. 243 contains several provisional battalions in Loison's Division, Thomieres' brigade. That simply means that the battalions had a mix of regimental companies, temporary and for a variety of reasons.

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your comment. Yes I think the two armies look right. My focus is on the game balance, given the very difficult situation Junot put his army in.

I have some ideas, following conversation with the guys who played on Saturday and will try them out next month. Nigel Marsh, the rules author, has also provided a lot of "food for thought" on the tactics options for both sides

Needless to say we always have fun playing with toy soldiers, and it's always fun chewing the scenarios over, before and after, with like minds.

Cheers
Jonathan

@McLaddie,

Sure, but I'm not sure how that helps here really? All of us think that those units you indicated had their grenadier/carabinier companies detached to the the grenadier battalions anyway. I'm missing something.

Regards

It matters not to me for my scenarios what troops were actually in the grenadier battalions or where they came from. One of the things that did seem odd was the number I saw most commonly used 2,100 men in these four battalions, a rather convenient number of 525 men per battalion. I'm always skeptical whenever I see numbers that work out so nicely. More often then not they turn out to be an educated guess by someone. If that's the case here then trying to confirm how many companies were used to compose these elite battalions and where did they come from will be a very difficult task.

This is without question a task for McLaddie as he never fails to amaze me with his research. So McLaddie, just curious, what's your final answer here? And yes you can call a friend!

Best regards,

Glenn