Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

After some hesitation I decided to do this work myself - review easily acessable sources in search of either evident British superiority over French on the Peninsula or evidence that will not take this point of view. To do so I'll use the following procedure:
1.Open list of Wars on www.regiments.org, and there Peninsula 1808-1814. Here all the minor engagements leave alone battles are named. If there exist known to the authors discription of the engagement link for it is given
2. If no info is vailable I'll use Wikipedia
3. Words "fell back in disorder","was driven away","gave way","repelled an assault" for me indicate a clear presence of routs. Prove me wrong but with my 3 years of extensive fighting in two Clubs for the eraI never saw such a thing happen without routing of several units, leaving their neighbours disordered and outnumbered and hence forced to fall back. "Left in panic", "fled","routed away" means for me a massive rout which a really a rare case in our games.

So 1808:
<b>1808 Aug. 17 Rolica</b>
"I was not able to use the links present so used Wikipedia
At this point things were made interesting by a mistake. Colonel Lake of the 29th Regiment of Foot in the center dashed up a gully toward the French position, and arrived behind Laborde. This cost Lake his life and lost most of the men in the 29th. This prompted a general attack in relief by the outnumbering British. The fight was rough and uphill with Laborde hoping for support to arrive from Loison. He repulsed three assaults by the British until nearly 4:00 in the afternoon. At this time Wellesley reached positions at the top of the hill and Ferguson arrived over the hills to the east."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rolica
Three attacks repelled with odds 3:1 favoring Brits! An overall minor victory for British force of course but taking into account the odds a vere humble result.

Four days later <b>1808 Aug. 21 Vimiera</b>
Here the links work and in discription we found such a case:
"The brigade of Solignac attacked the British left flank but was driven back from the mountain by Ferguson’s brigade which captured six French guns. The 71st Highlanders and 82nd Foot were left to guard the guns. These two regiments were surprised by Brenier, as he finally developed his assault on the mountain, and driven off the guns. Rallying, the regiments returned to the attack, recaptured the guns and inflicted heavy casualties on Brenier’s brigade. Brenier was wounded and captured. Ferguson’s brigade was well on the way to capturing numbers of the defeated French troops when the brigade commander received an order not to continue with the pursuit. Brenier’s and Solignac’s brigades had been forced along the mountain ridge away to the North, while Loisin and Laborde were driven due East. All along the line the pursuit was abandoned."
http://britishbattles.com/peninsula/pen ... imiero.htm
And in another discription:
"No sooner had Solignac's attack come to grief than Brennier's columns fell upon the rear and flank of three of Ferguson's battalions, the 1/71st, 1/82nd and 1/29th. By the time the first two of these battalions adjusted their positions to meet them Brennier's men closed on them and in a confused fight both the 71st and 82nd were pushed back, the French retaking the guns which had been abandoned by Solignac. However, the 1/29th had sufficient time to alter its position and was soon setting about the right flank of the attacking French columns who were forced to halt in the face of the 29th's musketry. Ferguson's other two battalions reformed and together the three British units forced Brennier's men back. The French appeared to have little stomach for the fight and were soon fleeing in a disorderly fashion, leaving behind them their commander, Brennier, who was wounded and taken prisoner. The three guns, retaken briefly by the French were once again in Wellesley's hands along with a further three guns which had accompanied Brennier."
http://www.ifbt.co.uk/vimeiro.htm
http://www.worcestershireregiment.com/w ... /h_vimiera
In the later two text is the same but the second contains a nice picture showing British infantry steadiness. Take notice how many dead and wounded are shown. The text is clearly pro-British so I do not feel there was much difference in the way Brits and French lost these very guns.
My comments: it never came to melee but for one case in which British infantry was "driven away" and yeilded guns. French assault was stopped by fresh unit (BTW the same 29th that lost 200+ men 4 days earlier). After that British infantry "rallied" (why rally if there were no rout? It's just the words, but still), reorganised and counterattacked after softing enemy up. French fled leaving the guns they captured. All this is possible to imitate only with C quality units. Bs and As would not fall back in disorder and would not need ralling or reorganisation while Ds would naturally rout away in masses.

Take notice overall Brits had 1,5:1 advantage and when it came to the attacks french 1200 man strong colomn of attack with effective fire strength of 200 was under fire of 2000 muskets in two rank lines. And still casualties were 720 Brits, 2000 French

Conclusion:I do not see such a feats that would need to be reflected with increased quality. Overall odds for the french were unfavourable. Most of the time every unit saw superior odds and practically were unable to melee.

<center></center>
<center><b>Eyo Imperatorskogo Velichestva Leib-Kirassirskogo polku
General-Mayor Anton Valeryevich Kosyanenko
Commander of the Second Army of the West </b></center>

Good points. If you attack only in column in this series the Lines are going to work you over really good thus inflicting more losses. Lines fall back facing the enemy as well. The new No Melee Elimination rule stops the ZOC kill as well.

I would note that size of unit has alot to do with whether a unit will TAKE a morale test. The User.hlp file has this to say:

When a unit suffers casualties due to combat, it may be subject to a Morale Check. This determination is based on a random number R from 0 to 1, the number of casualties taken C, and the strength of the unit S. A base strength B is calculated as

B = S / 10

If the base strength is less than 25, it is made equal to 25 (affecting units whose strength is less than 250 men). The Morale Check is then triggered when

R < L / (L + B)

For example, when a unit with 500 men takes a 25 man loss, the probability that it will take a Morale Check is 1/3, equal to 25 / (25 + 50).

Thus if you have 250 man British bns. fighting 500 man French bns. the odds are that the British with similar morale will run.

I would definitely not assign higher values of morale to the French than the British or even the same values:

French: C or B(at most)
British: B or A(at most)

The average line unit for the British could be argued to be A IF the size of their bns. is LOWER on the average than the French.

Good example:

NRC - the French bns. are on the average lower than the Russians. Statistically speaking they are going to rout away faster. Thus if you note, NRC morales are a bit higher than say Jena. Otherwise you would have the French army packing it in all too often. And there are several officers in the club that dont like the morale values of NRC.

The question that has yet to be presented is: could the French actually beat the Allies in the Peninsular. I think that the answer is "yes." If properly deployed (in line and not like that dumb formation of D'Erlon's at Waterloo) I think that they could have bested the British.

This entire discussion takes me back to the days of Empire III by Scott Bowden. The British bns. (always for some reason) had 9 castings. The French had 12 (!!!). A unit became Fatigued when it reached a certain level (25 to 33 percent losses, forget the exact number) and then it reached another level at 50 percent losses (forget the name for that one).

Thus after the British lost 2 castings they were shaken and their fire was recuced accordingly. We would line up two French lines to fire on them and it worked. As long as both lines got in a shot for a couple of rounds the British bn. was probably going to be reduced. Then it was only a matter of time before it succumbed to melee or a charge.

Now the French bns. had to lose 3 castings before the same thing happened to them.

Thus if you marched up in column, the British could on a good die roll I believe knock off 2-3 castings, cause them to become shaken and thus lose their ability of beating the British in melee. If you counterattacked as the British you would knock them back (but few times did the British players feel that they needed to do this).

Bowden's rules took into account the front rank being blasted away and thus causing confusion on the back ranks. A similar rule for columns would be helpful here.

Thus ... it all has to do with the strengths of the units and how you perceive that they acted historically (to some extent).

I am against militia having a higher morale grade than E (F is probably better) as they dont have to test as often due to the equation that John uses to cause a test in the first place.

I note that I have heard of militia that took FIRE (no losses) and bolted! I also note that 900 militia can beat an OG bn. of 200 men.

Good luck ever finding that to ever have happened.

In the end ... you guys have Wordpad on your PCs. If you dont like what we did in the game ... make a copy of the file, open up the editor and change the values in the file. I am glad that our OBs in this series are not locked for that reason. We designers will never please you guys in total. I dont see this as a cop out. I see it as allowing you to customize the game as you see fit.

Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, 5ème Division, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

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