I met Andrew through working with his father George many years ago and found he was almost as keen a wargamer as myself. His greatest interests lie in maritime, particularly Napoleonic and WW2, while mine range from ancient Assyria through to modern jet dogfights.
When we first met I was struggling to build American civil war armies so I could play games at the Stourbridge club. At the first show it became very clear that Andrew also had a very keen interest in the Napoleonic Wars or as I prefer to call them the "Great victories of Lord Wellington."
Before I knew it I had been craftily drawn into building a British and Portuguese army for a Spanish Peninsular campaign against Andrew's French hordes. Despite being somewhat handicapped by his insistence on fielding Spanish troops along side the Brits I managed to turn out victory after victory.
The odds gradually swung in my favour as I got dragged into the production line with threats of Andrew turning out even more French troops before each battle. Before the end of the campaign I had assembled considerable: British, King's German Legion, Brunswickers and Portuguese forces that were more than capable of launching an assault on the best the French could put up in Spain, even with Spanish help.
So on to 1813. I knew next to nothing about this campaign of Napoleon and have little love for him or the French people as a whole. In fact I think the 100 Years war ended too soon. Nevertheless, having discovered that a few defeats greatly discouraged the opposition (never Andrew) in the Spanish campaign I decided I would have to play the frogs on strict condition I NEVER have to engage British forces.
Meanwhile I have been suckered once again by Andrew, this time into painting up forces for Napoleon's army. However, I point blank refused to paint any French and so we now have some regiments from: Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Milano guard, and an Irish regiment.
With a loft recently kitted out with a largish table for long campaign battles and Andrew chaffing at the bit to use his thousands of; Prussians, Russians, Swedes and Austrians, we came to the start of our campaign at Grieto. Why Grieto? Well Andrew had picked some Lulu of battle sites than would have meant almost instant defeat of the Coalition forces by a handful of Frogs, so I found the nearest suitable field of battle using Google maps and various historical reports of the region including old maps.
Why was the first account of the battle from the point of a French war horse? Damned if I know. Sometimes the fingers move of their own violation over the keyboard and I am left with little to do but spell check.
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