Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Campaign in Spain 1809: Battle of Peuto Lapice Day 2

Despite being pushed back to within a hair's breadth of defeat on the first day, Vanagas surprised everybody by rallying his men overnight & standing his ground.
Overnight both sides rallied their men with broken units being returned in the rear 1 off being shaken & others recovering up to half their casualties.   The Spanish army is now deployed in an L with Peuto Lapice at the angle.  The infantry & cavalry on their right (left of pic) are the rallied broken divisions & are in poor shape.  The broken French division is off shot to the right.
Victor commended proceedings with an immediate attack on the Spanish left while his left maneouvred further left to attack the Spanish right.  His cavalry & artillery covered the gap between his infantry divisions.
There is desperate fight going on on the hill on the far flank, with the Spanish holding on suprisingly well (Mark having one of his good dice nights).
So far Victor has so far made no impression on the Spanish right & their left is also holding on nicely in the woods. The French battery is causing  casulaties in the village, but nothing decisive.
After the Spanish artillery was almost silenced by the French guns, Victor sent his cavalry forward to finish them off.  On the left the first French attacks have been beaten off & Victor is getting ready for another attack.  The other flank is still indecisive.  The French are becoming despondent in the face of unusually tough Spanish resistance.
Victor's cavalry has pulled back from the Spanish squares beside the village.  On the far flank the French have pulled back with both divisions having high casualties.  But on the left Victor finally launches a better coordinated attack with better dice & suddenly the Spanish right has crumbed.
With the collapse of the Spanish right, their position is totally compromised.  Victor resumed his pressure on the Spanish left.  The Spanish cavalry is no fit state to resist the wall of French infantry columns advancing on them.  The Spanish call a retreat.  One of the Spanish divisions on their left is broken covering the retreat, but the Spanish get away without failing their Army Break Test.

4 comments:

Phil said...

A huge and lovely game!

Gonsalvo said...

Great stuff; what rules are you guys using?

Jim Gandy said...

The rules we use are our house modification of Hail Caesar for Napoleonics. In our Hail Whoever rules we have a page of special rules for each different era up to Colonial.

Gonsalvo said...

Sounds reasonable... IMHO, pretty much describes Black Powder, etc... Hail the Duke! :-)

Regardless looks great and a fine project!