The Battle of Salisbury – Scenario

Blessed with a calm sea and helped by the fact that Nelson was chasing his tail in the Caribbean, The Armee d’Angleterre was successfully transported to Bournemouth where it made an unopposed landing. The Emperor wasted no time in getting his troops on the move. Nansouty and Poniatowksi were immediately ordered to scout the road towards Southampton where they found Uxbridge with his cavalry Brigade. In the face of superior French forces Uxbridge sensibly withdrew.

Meanwhile D’Hilliers was scouting north with the 5^th Lancers towards Andover where he discovered Ponsonby and the British heavy cavalry supported by Moore with the Naval Battalion. D’Hilliers decided to wait at Salisbury whilst Ney and Massena moved their infantry divisions up in support. However, the British were not prepared to await the French advance and chose instead to attack them at Salisbury.

So, we have our first battle with an interesting mix of forces (which is exactly the sort of game I was hoping for). The British force is made up almost entirely of Heavy Cavalry whilst the French are all infantry except for the Lancers.

British OOB

Moore

Naval Battalion

1 x Dutch Foot Artillery

6 x Rifles

Ponsonby

Scots Greys

Inniskilling Dragoons

1st Royal Dragoons

1 x Horse Battery

French OOB

Ney

45th Line

Converged Grenadiers

1 x Line Foot Battery

6 x Skirmishers

Massena

105th Line

9th Light Infantry

1 x Line Foot Battery

6 x Skirmishers

D’Hilliers (Brigade)

5th Lancers

Although Rob is the strategic attacker the game is being played as an encounter battle. The objective for both sides is to take and hold Salisbury Hill by the end of turn 8.

5th Chevau Leger Lancers

The old 3rd Chevau Leger Lancers have been refitted and expanded and are now battle-ready as the 5th Chevau Leger Lancers. There is nothing quite as dashing on a wargames table as a unit of lancers and these ones do look quite spiffing with their newly issued, blue-faced uniforms.

I painted five of these from scratch (including the converted trumpeter) and the other seven were originally Don’s handiwork but now heavily reworked by me. The result is a bit of a mishmash of styles with no black lining but I’m more than happy with the finished look. The figures are:

11 x FN/118 Light Horse Lancer in crested helmet (mounted) charging

1 x FN/320 Light Horse Lancer (converted to trumpeter)

The 5th are currently on patrol ‘somewhere in Wiltshire’.

Fake News?

There are rumours (unsubstantiated) that the French have advanced as far as Wiltshire...

The War of Words

Both sides have been cranking up their propaganda machines as the French make a landing at Bournemouth.

Not sure who will win the misinformation war?

The Napoleonic Invasion of Britain 1969

Back in the late 60s and early 70s I had a subscription to Miniature Warfare Magazine, the first 'proper' wargame magazine produced by John Tunstill. The content of the magazines was of variable quality and went downhill dramatically after 1971 but every now and then there would be something published that caught my imagination.

The January/February 1970 issues carried such an article entitled The Napoleonic Invasion of Britain by Bletchley Wargames Group. That sounds like a fun game I thought, Napoleon invading the green and pleasant land and the British throwing him back into the sea! At that point I didn’t have a British army or even a French one for that matter, so I never got to try out my own invasion, but the idea stuck in the back of my mind.

Having recently stumbled on a link to the Murat Maps I thought the map of Southern England would be perfect for an attempt at this piece of 70s nostalgia. Better than the map used in the original game, which was a modern Ordinance Survey Map - somehow ordering Ney to “advance up the A24 and take the second exit from the Horsham roundabout on to the A264” never really did sound right to me. The Murat Maps (click here) are a great free resource with potential (perhaps one day) to provide the basis for a huge Napoleonic campaign.

So, fortunately Rob has agreed to be my opponent in a play-by-email version of the campaign, and I’ll fight any resulting table battles as solo affairs. For hidden movement without an Umpire we will be using a 21st century version of Featherstone's 'Matchbox' system using the tabs on an Excel spreadsheet instead of matchboxes.

I have split the OOB’s for each army into quite small forces in the hope the campaign will throw up some interesting smallish scenarios that should be fun as solo games. I’ll see how we get on and keep you posted.

Light Horse Lancers

As part of my continuing project to increase all my 6-figure cavalry squadrons to full 12-figure units I thought it was time to turn my attention to the French. You may recall that I have some line lancers (FN/118 one-piece Lancer) that Don gave me that form half of my Lancer/Chasseur unit and these have been designated as next in line for an upgrade.

This has proved more time consuming than I had hoped as I have pretty much had to repaint the existing figures as well as paint up six additional ones. I find retouching existing paintwork is generally more work than starting from scratch because apart from colour matching I have to adapt my style to fit in with the original painter’s work. In this instance I’ve had to get by without any black lining which I find hard.

With the addition of sky-blue facings, the unit will now represent the 5th Chevau-Legers-Lancers as per the Hinton Hunt painting instruction sheet. I did have fun making the trumpeter conversion (from FN/320 2-piece Lancer) possibly my favourite conversion so far. I have two more figures to paint and then they'll be ready for basing.

The Royal Horse Guards

I painted the first six figures for this unit some 12 years ago, but I’m pleased to have finally expanded them to a full regiment which is no less than these splendid gentlemen deserve. They should be mounted on black horses, but I didn’t know this when I started work on them, so they are mostly on a mixture of dark brown mounts. All the figures are vintage Hinton Hunt castings of BN/60 Household Cavalry Trooper (mounted) charging.

Next I'll be evening things up a bit by working on some French cavalry.