The battle of Talavera (27-28 july, 1809)

The battle of Talavera or Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), was a bloody battle of the Peninsular War, which was held the 27 and July 28, 1809.
50.000 French (and Allied) under Marshall Victor, General Sebastiani and the overall command of King Joseph Bonaparte, fought against 20.000 British (and German) and 33.200 Spaniards commanded respectively by Arthur Wellesley and Gregorio de la Cuesta.

The battle was mainly fought bewteen the British (and German) and French (and Allied) contingents, with the Spanish units only having a subsidiary role, covering the right flank of the Allied position.

The battle concluded with the tactical victory of the Allied (6.500 losses) with the French having around 7.400 casualties. However, the strategical game was lose to the Allied when Marshall Soult menaced the British rearguard forcing Wellington (which received his tittle after this battle) to hastly retire towards Lisbon.

There are many versions about the battle, slightly different according to the writer's country!
See a sample of the web sites (you can found many more with Google):
Bataille de Talavera (French)
La bataille de Talavera de la Reina (French)
Battle of Talavera (English)
The Peninsular War. The Battle of Talavera (English)
Batalla de Talavera (Spanish)
Talavera 1809 (Spanish) The best Spanish site about the battle
In my opinion, the best information can be found at the Napoleon Series site

Some books:
- La Crisis de una Alianza (La campaña del Tajo de 1809) by Juan J. Sañudo and Leopoldo Stampa, Ministerio de Defensa, Madrid (1996) The Spanish academic definitive work!
- Talavera 1809 Primera victoria Aliada by Jose M. Rodriguez and Dionisio Alvarez Cueto, Almena, Madrid (2004)
- Talavera: Wellington's Early Peninsula Victories 1808-9 by Peter Edwards, The Crowood Press Ltd (2007)
- Talavera: Wellington's First Victory in Spain by Andrew Field, Leo Cooper Ltd (2005)

For the bicentenary
The official site Talavera, un lugar en la Historia (with English translation)
The blog of the Bicentenary Coordinator Sergio de la Llave

A wargaming version can be found in my main web-site Battle of Talavera . Above, you can see a picture from my "home-battle", depicting a charge of the Spanish Cavalry Regimento del Rey: an event very similar to the historical!

I'm back

I'm back from San Sebastián after attending the XV Meeting of the Spanish Society of Analytical Chemistry. The meeting was a well organized events, and all the scientific communications were very interesting.
The organizers also carried us to the Txillida Leku Museum to see the sculptures of this great artist.
And now... Leipzig is waiting!

My next painting job?

After I'll come back from the Analytical Chemistry meeting of San Sebastián (see previous post), I will hopefully retake the painting job, after a long time without any incorporation to my Napoleonic armies.
This time, I'll change to metal. I buyed some months ago a bargain pack (Reference number FR19) of Newline Designs, comprising 100 French Line Infantry in greatcoats.
It is the first time I'll paint Napoleonic infantry in such uniform item, so I'll use as reference the work of Matt in his blog In The Grand Manner. Matt is a fan of great battallions but he uses 20 mm figures so his experience is very interesting.

The Matt's painting work is several levels above me, as can be seen in the above picture, so don't expect a similar result...
See you the next week! after the San Sebastián trip.

A break for work

I will out the next days (19 -22 july) attending the XV Meeting of the Spanish Society of Analytical Chemistry. My contributions will be some posters about the environmental effects of the heavy metals (all interested in this and other environmental topics could visit my other blog Heavy Metal) and the use of chemometrics tools to highlight the information.

The meeting will be at San Sebastián in the Basque Country. This town was besieged and taken by the Wellington's Allied Army (7 July - 8 September 1813) during the campaign of Vitoria.

For a basic outline of this siege see the Wikipedia or the Osprey books Vittoria 1813 and Fortresses of the Peninsular War 1808-1814.

Rohan cavalry à la Armand d'Arc

This is the last painting-work of my Argentinian friend, Armand d'Arc: the Rohan cavalry.
"The Rohan cavalry was taken into imperial service in 1795 alongside the infantry, the original six squadrons increasing to 12 by 1796. Uniforms consisted of white shakos with rosettes and yellow-black plumes, yellow cords, poplar green dolmans with yellow-black braid, crimson facings, white lambskin trim and yellow buttons, sclaert Hussar breeches, white leatherwork, red sobretache with 'FI' cypher and yellow-black braid."
(Taken from "Austrian Auxiliary Troops 1792-1816" by Dave Hollins and William Younghusband, Osprey Men-at-Arms 299)

The Armand's squadron is 137 men strong. All the men are conversions from HäT 8013 Napoleonic French Horse Grenadiers, and the officers are carrying red tipped plumes. The only varion is that shakos were painted black (instead white) and . The squadron is commanded by the Prince of Rohan, Jallachich De Buzin. The unit was actually part of the Prince Charles bodyguard during the battle of Wagram, and must not be mistaken with the "Hussars of Rohan", an emigré unit at British pay.

These pictures and many more will (hopefully) appear at the ETS page of the HäT web-site
Enjoy!

First birthday of ALKAID and launching of issue no. 4

A cultural act to celebrate the first anniversary of ALKAID EDITIONS and the launching of the issue No. 4 of ALKAID MULTITHEMATIC MAGAZINE, took place the 23 of June in the facilities of "Caja Duero" in Valladolid (Spain),
The act, included in the activities of the JESUS PEREDA CULTURAL ATHENEUM, counted on the attendance of a numerous public, who followed with attention the introductory words of Pilar Iglesias (ALKAID's chairman) and three brief conferences about: "Geographic Information Systems" (Sergio Pardo, expert in G.I.S.) , “Introduction to the New Digital Art” (Agustín Espina, graphical designer of ALKAID) and " Web 2,0 and scientific divulgation" (Rafael Pardo, scientific director of ALKAID EDITIONS).

from left to right: Pilar Iglesias, María Vallejo (Jesús Pereda Atheneum), Rafael Pardo, Sergio Pardo and Agustín Espina

The magazine ALKAID has a multithematic structure: science, art, trips, gaming, environment, history, literature, poetry… and the issue 4 contains a "Napoleonic" article by Miguel Angel García García, La repercusión de la Guerra de la Independencia en la población civil (The repercussion of the Peninsular War on the civil population) presenting several testimonies about the personal and patrimonial damages suffered by the population during that conflict, giving back to us the horrors of the war.

Honour: the new Sam Mustafa's system

Sam Mustafa, the author of the wargaming rule-sets Grande Armée and Might and Reason, is now working in a new Napoleonic system named Honour. According to his own words:

"Honour is a new series of miniatures games for the horse-and-musket era. It will appear in Modules, starting at the end of 2009. Each module of the Honour system is a complete set of wargame rules that examines one of the wars of this period at a particular scale, and with a particular style. In the coming years modules will eventually address all of the wars of the era @1700-1900, at multiple scales and levels of play.
Every module in the Honour system uses the same flexible basing system that can scale to any player’s collection. All use the same basic set of terminology, measurements, and sequence of play. Each module “plugs-in” the distinctive features and flavor of the period it addresses, at the scale it addresses, to the core Honour system.
Every game in the Honour series is a beautiful, full-color hardback book with inspiring photographs and lavishly

Coming in Winter 2009: Lasalle
Lasalle is the first module for Honour. Players take the role of a brigade or division commander in the Napoleonic Wars.
The game is small-scale and tactical in nature, focusing on the movement of individual battalions and regiments of cavalry. The player will manage a small force of roughly a dozen units as he tries to complete some specific mission assigned to him, such as “Hold the village and our bridgehead at all costs!” or: “Drive the French from Plancenoit!”

Coming in Spring 2011: Blücher
Blücher puts the player in the role of an army commander in the Napoleonic Wars. It represents the most complete rethinking of grandtactical gaming in decades.
In Blücher players move entire divisions and corps at a time, but with bases representing the individual battalions, batteries, and regiments that comprise the “footprint” of those larger entities. Movement, shooting and combat resolve very quickly, often with dozens of bases engaged simultaneously, in a single, straightforward process. "

Take a look at the proposed basing system:

I am a fan of Napoleon's Battles ruleset, now in his 3rd edition (see Napoleon's Battles 3rd Edition post), but I am also a compulsive rule-set buyer, and Sam always offers new and imaginative game mechanisms, so I am waiting for the launching of his new products!

More information at the Sam Mustafa's Honour web site

Two essential bibliographical resources

While surfing through the Napoleon-Series Forum, I have found two posts for Steven H. Smith (of course!), giving two essential bibliographical resources for the Napoleonic era in general, and the Campaign of Leipzig in particular.

The first is related with one of the translations found in the Mark's Conrad page about Russian Military History: the Volume X of Viskovatov , covering the uniforms of 'Grenadiers, Musketeers, Jägers, Marines, and Carabiniers' from 1801 to 1825. The plates are located here, hosted in Memorandum, a Russian site that can be viewed through Babelfish.
The original Steven's post in Napoleon-Series Forum can be also found here.

The other resource are several links to 'Der Krieg in Deutschland und Frankreich in den Jahren 1813 und 1814' by Carl von Plotho. 3 vols. Published by C. F. Amelang, 1817. You can find all the links here, or copy and paste the followings addresses

Vol 1:
http://books.google.com/books?id=IRYLVfK-rgUC
http://books.google.com/books?id=0HkuAAAAMAA
http://books.google.com/books?id=KmsIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=xksUAAAAYAAJ

Vol 2:
http://books.google.com/books?id=lnouAAAAMAA
http://books.google.com/books?id=vzRttj9l4AEC
http://books.google.com/books?id=O2sIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=4lMUAAAAYAAJ

Vol 3:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UnsuAAAAMAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=tdJaWOJqkZkC
http://books.google.com/books?id=iWsIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=604UAAAAYAAJ

The books are printed in gothic characters and are not easy to read (at least for me!), but the OOB, located at the end of each book, are easier to follow.

Enjoy!

Maps of Westfalia

A new (german) resource, found in the Napoleon-Series Forum by courtesy of Steven H. Smith (a.k.a the 'urbique' boy).
To use the maps
1) Go towards the end of the page and find the General index Map
2) Click on one of the sheets on the index sheet
3) You'll see three little icons beside the thumbnail. Click on the middle one that looks like a big "Z"
4) Now double click on the map sheet where you want to zoom in

Enjoy!