Gévora for Lasalle. Some considerations

The battle of Gévora was a small affaire of the Peninsular War, involving 7,000French and 12,000 Spanish/Portuguese troops, so it is adequate for a tactical ruleset like Lasalle, being out of scope for grand-tactical rulesets like Napoleon's Battles.
The actual OOB's, as found in the bibliography, were easily translated in terms of Lasalle units, that reflect the differences between the two contender armies at the time of the conflict. All French units, taken directly from the Peninsula list, are Reliable or Valiant, whereas Spanish units have a large percentage of Unpredictable or Shaky units: 60% for the infantry and 100% for the cavalry (See this post).
With these abysmal differences, the final result of the game was very similar to the real one: a Decisive French Victory.
The Spanish losses were: Four broken infantry units (Unión / Batallón del General / Inmemorial del Rey/ León), two broken cavalry units (Algarve and Imperiales de Toledo) and two cavalry units that fled from the battlefield ( Carabineros and Reina). On the French side, only a batallion, 2/88me Ligne, was lost
Evidently, the reason behind the Spanish rout also included a faulty Spanish deployment: a long line of motionless infantry units deployed in the open on a long ridgeline with the cavalry behind the heights. However the main cause of the French success, both in the real world and on the tabletop, was the double encirclement attack used by Mortier. Like in the real world, on the tabletop the battles are half-losen or half-won before the actual fight start.
In addition, the house-rule for Spanish cavalry, penalizing the attempts to advance towards the French with a mandatory Discipline test and a -1 additional modifier, and helping the 'Fall Back' reaction with a +1 modifier, simulated very well the poor performance of the Spanish cavalry during the battle.

The next installment will be also another Peninsular War issue: the battle of Chiclana, best known as Barrosa for the English-speaking people.

Watch this space!

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