12. Battle of Navalcamero - 23rd August 1808

This is a small fight, but again quite unusual in that it pits a very small but very high quality French force against a larger but poorer drilled Spanish force that must attack across a defended stream.

No Doodle as it's this weekend and probably Saturday, with Sesena being Sunday.



Crampton's Gap map so you must have the Antietam add-on pack to play. The map is oriented normally, north to the top. The blue river is the Guadarrama which flows south and it's uncrossable except at the points shown where roads cross it. There are a total of seven of these: 1) west of Tancos; 2 & 3) At Punhete/Navalcamero; 4) south-west of San Luza; 5) west of Villa de Axeda; 6) south-west of Almerim; 7) east of Marta. The town of Punhete is Navalcamero. We can use all the other names as is, since they're Spanish.

The road from Talavera crosses from the west over a shoulder of high ground that is one of the foothills of the mountains to the NW of Madrid, passing via Azambuja and Trenies. The road then crosses the Guadarrama at Navalcamero before exiting the east map edge in a north-easterly direction on the way to Madrid.

The Spanish objective is to push across the Guadarrama and exit off the east map edge along this main road. Disabling or destroying the French blocking their path is a secondary objective.

The French must prevent the Spanish continuing east to the capital.

The defence is commanded by none other than King Joseph himself. I will invoke a special political rule if he is killed or captured! I will consider him killed or captured (25/75 chance) if his avatar is killed by an enemy unit and he'll be captured if he is with a friendly unit when it surrenders!

The attacking force are elements of el Conde de Belvedere's Army of Extramadura.

Official report:

The Spanish were completely defeated at this battle. At the end of the fight almost their entire army was in rout or taken prisoner. All 18 of their guns were captured along with 3 colours. Of a strength of 12 battalions and 6 squadrons in the two Spanish divisions, only 4 battalions of van Koerten's division survived unbroken at the end, making a fighting retreat down the Talavera road. All of Henestrosa's division was routed or captured and he as well as both his brigade generals and two artillery commanders were wounded or taken prisoner.

French losses were minimal - for example the 196 strong squadron of Grenadiers a Cheval de la Garde ended the battle 195 strong and racked up a score of almost 1100 points. This example sums up this terrible defeat for the Spanish, possibly the worst they have suffered.

King Joseph has shown himself to be a cool commander in the field, though it's said he did nothing but eat grapes handed up to him by a servant while the battle raged nearby. His division and brigade commanders, Dorsenne, Friedrichs and Lepic apparently did all the work.

The sad thing about this battle is that it was my Army and I could not play because I did not have the map. So much for that.

Kind of disheartening for me to find this out today. Just put a bunch of cold water dumped on this campaign for me.


Not that it would have effected the out come of the battle but after all the time I spent I could not play in the battle they were in.

Mike, buy the add-on map packs, they are all worth it. I use them all a lot in campaign games so if you don't have them, you'll only be missing out on other battles.

In fact the campaign is suffering because players don't have these maps - so get them, support Norb financially, support the campaign and enjoy the MP games.

Don't be disheartened, Mike. Having you there would have made no difference at all, the French guard are a very strong unit; they are small though, so any losses inflicted on them will hurt them. One battalion and 2 squadrons suffered quite heavily.

On the upside we have had 3 other Spanish armies defeated heavily in battle and they are all still active, so don't worry too much about that. Unlike some other players this was by no means all your army either so chin up and keep calm!

My brother taught me that the key to command is to delegate, delegate, delegate! And to maintain a well-fed body at all times. But mostly to delegate.

His Majesty, King Josef of Spain