Battle Santarem 19th November 1810 - Part 1
Setup
The Battle: After the 4/47th departed, escorting General Foy out of Portugal, Reynier received orders from Massena to hold Santarem. Junot’s 8th and Ney’s 6th Corps could reinforce Reynier within 24 hours. Wellington received false intelligence on the 17th that the French were vacating Santarem. Wellington resolved to attack.
The terrain map was put together with brown wrapping paper – 80gsm 750mm x 50m Kraft Wrapping paper. Overlapping in the middle set to size 6’ by 4’ with side edge extra for strength of a few inches – glued with PVA / glue stick. Terrain map basic layout courtesy of Michael Hopper’s - Rise of Albion scenario book. So I sketched out to scale and painted on with Acrylic paints to designate the hills, roads (an adaption I chose from the lovely maps created by Colin in our 20mm campaigns – see Simon’s blog on http://www.servicerationdistributionhobby.blogspot.com ). Found with 15mm figures the 2D maps are the easiest and Michael’s maps and positions of terrain make all the difference in the battle. So cheap, easy to store, and if you are finished with it then environmentally easy to dispose of.
The amount of area of paint on the Kraft paper did cause more buckling so used plastic sheets to flatten down the map, especially with the large city the walls and buildings were falling over as troops placed. The Cathedral is a paper model that was a free download from the web (scaled to match), the walls were originally 10mm from a German group who had a paper diorama of a romantic medieval Bavarian town in Pinterest - I got in touch and bought the set of paper layouts (scaled up to 15mm and modified), the gate houses were a free download from Pinterest (scaled to match). Most of the terrain buildings were created for Regensburg game played at Simon’s a few years ago – check out his blog for that. The Spanish buildings were taken from the booklet of Paper Soldiers Fighting battle Booklet terrain book (which is 28mm so scaled to match).
In this map the hills are steep but not impassable, except the gentle edge of hill on the East of Santarem to the river Rio Tagus which is impassable. The area had been inundated with rain prior to the battle causing the river to flood and turn most of the battle plain into mud. The British enter from the South in the limits set by the text boxes. Cavalry and artillery cannot move over the mud, Infantry and Skirmishers are ½ speed. In the scenario each infantry in the mud (not the causeways) must roll a D6 on a 1-2 it moves (1/2 move) 3-6 it is stuck but may fire in in position if able to do so. Causeway movement is ½ speed (no test required). Penalties for moving over streams in the mud are ignored – not cumulative.
The basic scenario involves the Allies pushing in on the French to push them out of Santarem. The battle fought 8am to 12pm represents 12 turns in this case with variable length for the scenario. Cavalry cannot enter Santarem.
I am playing the British CinC Wellington (off table for whole scenario with foot artillery), with Beckwith as General who has 1 Elite Light Infantry, 2 Light Infantry. Barclay who has 1 Elite Light Infantry, 1 large Light Infantry, 1 poor light infantry, 1 light infantry, 1 skirmisher. Stopford who has 2 Guard and 1 skirmisher. Blantyre who has 1 Elite Light Infantry, 3 Average Infantry, 1 skirmisher. Low the other General with 4 Average (KGL) and 1 Skirmisher. Anson has 2 light cavalry (Option make 1 into 1 Elite KGL Hussar), and Slade (off table to South below the deployment of Stopford et al) has 1 medium cavalry and 1 light cavalry – both are on reserve orders.
Alan is the French CinC Reynier (with foot artillery in the redoubt with abatis), with General Sarrut who has 4 light infantry and 1 Skirmisher, and 3 average infantry and 1 skirmisher, and a foot artillery. Graindorge who has 3 light infantry and 1 Skirmisher. Foy who has 3 light infantry and 1 Skirmisher, and 4 average infantry and 1 skirmisher. Arnauld who has 4 light infantry and 1 Skirmisher, and 3 average infantry and 1 skirmisher. Soult has 2 light cavalry. You would get the full scenario details in Michael’s book – The Rise of Albion.
We had to stop at the end of turn 5. Too much chatting and enjoying of bacon rolls. Gave me a chance to tidy up figure positions. Like Foy moving to defend the South of Santarem.
At this point I realised that the troops I was placing for Beckwith, Barclay and Blantyre were getting mixed up. Not so straight forward when units failing to come on because they did not roll a 1, or 2 so became stuck in the mud. Rather than deploying a full Brigade. Also after taking the General figure out and being placed on the battle terrain, the pieces of paper showing the Brigades got moved about. So sorted this out as well. Marking the skirmishers and other units so that we could pick the game up in just over a week. So the unit positions for the British are a little different at the start of turn 6. Also due to the limit on the photos for each report I can split into 2 parts.
This is the end of part 1 ... | 
