"Battle of Talavera, 1809 at Historicon" Topic

Run Friday night at Historicon 2018. Took me a while to write up everything, and now finally getting around to posting links here. Two more to go after this!

28 mm, 6 x 12 foot table, Field of Battle 2nd ed rules

For the full report:
link

Peter

Wow… those are 28mm? Normally I'd expect to see a game that size played in 15mm – or less. They're very impressive!

My hat's off to you. You did an amazing job with this game!

I never planned to build a Peninsular War army of units from a single battle, but my 1st Division is actually to be one battalion of each of the 11 regiments that formed Victor's Ist corp; and my 4th Division was to have 4 battalions of French, 3 or Polish, and 5 of Nassau, Baden, Kingdom of Holland, Hessen and Frankfurt – Poles and Germans from the actual 4th corps in Spain. I just cannot find any specific data for the French in that corps – unique drummer uniforms; sapeur uniforms; grenadier or voltigeur color/cord/cuff specifics. I toyed with doing them in the white uniforms intended for 1806!

You have done a remarkable job of representing the French units that were at Talavera!

Wonderful set-up, and wonderful units! I could spend an hour or more just looking at the units!

Help me learn: I see a British Light Dragoon unit on "bucksksin" or "claybank" or perhaps "dun" horses. I recall that the French 5th Chasseurs a cheval tried to keep their regiment on such colored horses, and the men has buff belting, but is this the case with a British light dragoon regiment?

Also, in the same engagement, you have a French dragoon unit with the soldier leaning forward with sabre thrust over the horses' heads – very proper "give point" maneuver. Can you tell us who the figure maker is?

You also mention a British infantry unit with purple facings. I do not recall such a facing color in the Napoleonic period. Who might they be?

And a British unit with orange facings? AS I recall, the ?33rd foot? had red or scarlet facings. Might it actually have been an orange?

GdeP

Thanks for the kind words to The King and GdeP!

I doubt very many units, other than Guards perhaps, were able to maintain consistent horse colors; most probably didn't even try. I prefer a bit of a "toy soldier" look, so almost all of my units do in fact have uniform horse colors, aside from perhaps greys/whites for the trumpeters.

The Dragoon with his sword at "give point" is Foundry; they do a Cuirassier pose like this also (which is also in my collection).

The British regiment with orange facings is the 35th "Sussex" regiment. From my blog post about the unit:

link

The regiment was unique among British infantry units in having orange facings. They were granted by King William 3rd (of Orange) as a mark of special favor and in recognition of the Protestant character of the Regiment. The regimental nickname was "The Orange Lillies", the orange for obvious reasons, and the Lily allegedly for the lillies (fleur-de lis) on the flag of their conquered foes at Quebec, the Royal Roussillon regiment.

The 35th did not in fact fight in the Peninsula, but did fight at Maida, Malta, and (2nd battalion) at Waterloo.

There is much more history of the Regiment in the above post.

The purple faced unit is the 56th, "West Essex:". nicknamed "The Pompadours". From my blog post about this unit:

link

When first raised, the unit had deep crimson facings, but these were felt to be unsuitable, so in 1764 the facings were changed to purple, making it unique among British regiments. This was described as a shade of Rose – Purple called Pompadour, after the mistress of King Louis XV of France, Madame de Pompadour, who called this color her favorite. The men of the regiment liked to claim it was the color of her underwear! Regardless, it accounts for the regimental nickname, "The Pompadours"

(I suspect the proper shade might be more lavender or mauve, but here's one modern reference top the color
beautycolorcode.com/6a1f44 )

This would suggest a much more pink color (for porcelaion at least)
link

During the Napoleonic Wars, a second battalion was added to the regiment in 1804, and a third in 1813. The first battalion was sent to India in 1805, and the 2nd battalion joined it there in 1807. The 3rd battalion served in the Low Countries in 1813. In 1810, the first battalion participated in the capture of Ile Bourbon, and then Mauritius, the last remaining French possessions in the Indian Ocean.

So once again, it didn't actually see action in the Peninsula… but I couldn't resist those unusual facing colors, now could I? :-)

Peter

Very nice Peter
You deserve the award
See next summer
Clif

Darn, i'm sorry I missed this one. love FOB rules.

Bryan

Thanks, Clif. See you at the new venue!

Bryan – plans for Historicon 2019 include the battle of Berg Isel (Tyrolean rebels and a few Austrian regulars vs Bavarians) with FoB2.

Peter

Nice, used to set it up on a 10 x 6 table in 15mm, on 27 Jul, in our Battery conference room to brief visitors (46 Talavera Battery RA)

Tally Ho!

Great looking game Peter! It's certainly difficult to put on such a large game by yourself. Three years ago our group put on Ligny and Waterloo at Enfilade but we had 6 of our group running them.

Nick, thanks. Running it on the Anniversary in a conference room of unit trtacing back to the battle and before – very cool!

Wrgmr1 – Thanks; I had help from Barry setting it up, and Tim with rules, etc. I have done considerably bigger games at Historicon in the past, including Austerlitz, Eylau, Aspern-Essling and Wagram (with a team of 6 also), Znaim, Dresden, Dennewitz, Libertwolkwitz, and Ligny, and with Barry taking the lead (and 5 guys contributing troops) Borodino. Megalomania is a feature of the era! :-)

Great looking game.
We have played this battle twice now in 28mm using Black Powder. The second time we also played the preceding night and morning assaults with results rolling over to the next game. great fun.

Thanks, Jabba! It is an interesting battle given the large number of Spanish involved. The British are good troops, but at this point, most of them were still pretty new to active campaigning.