06. Battle of San Milan - 13th July 1808

Losses in approximate figures before stragglers and walking wounded rejoin their regiments:

French - 120 killed, 450 wounded, 100 missing.
Spanish - 320 killed, 1300 wounded, 280 missing.

The Spanish had 1 cannon routed, the French 3.

The Spanish had 1 lancer sqdn and 9 btns routed.

The French had a converged voltigeur unit captured.

This was a difficult battle result to adjudicate. The Spanish lost far more men and yet at the end of the fight as darkness fell they had secured all of their objectives (drive the enemy away from the crossing over the river Ebro and cut the supply road to Miranda). The French, although still with much fight in them were in a pocket and if combat were resumed in the morning, recovered Spanish units could be moving in on them from all sides with the Miranda road held by 1 lancer sqn and 7 battalions.

I've therefore decided this is a minor Spanish victory. Had the butchers bill not been so long and had a few French infantry units routed it would have been a major victory but the heavy losses mean Acevedo's force now has dubious offensive capability.

Mouton's division must withdraw from battle (they are out of supply and will get no food tonight and no replacement ammunition tomorrow). Looking at the strategic map and the ending position of the two forces it appears the French best line of egress is south-west, across the Rio Tortola and then over the hills towards the Burgos road.

Mouton's division will therefore retreat to Burgos.

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In hindsight, we shouldn't have attacked up north at all because it allowed Mitra to pull away. Attacking across a ford into a French battery and Brigade doesn't really seem to work.

I found watching the replay frustrating in some ways. The Spanish plan almost worked, in fact Mitra was pulling units away from the bridge because he and Ike had seen all those Spanish regts going west around to Mark's position but Steve and Roger I think attacked maybe 15 minutes too soon. The French units marching away were easily recalled the short distance and both Spanish brigades were quickly destroyed.

Over on Mark's flank I was also dismayed to see the Spanish attempt a crossing at once without waiting for their guns to arrive (also someone didn't give the 6pdrs an order to march for ages and when they arrived they were not deployed properly so they really did nothing useful). It should have been easy here to pound Mark's battalions with canister and force him away from the river.

Players love a battle don't they? We enjoy the fight and itch to get involved even if its not in our army's best interests. I attacked a French unit with one of my lancer sqdns and had it routed for no useful purpose. Sometimes you can win a battle by literally doing nothing, as Sven says. Had the central river force not attacked, Mitra would have had to leave something there to watch 8 battalions, meanwhile having fewer troops to face off the 12 battalions coming round from the west.