01. Battle of Atalayuclas - After Action Reports

¡Hola mis amigos!

Riding at the head of Saint March's column, my picture of what happened at the Battle of Atalayuclas was necessarily incomplete. With reliable intelligence from our brave scouts (and certain patriotic elements from the local population) that Vedel's division was the sole French formation in the area, we had wisely decided to pry the Frog from his defensive position without recourse to a crude frontal assault. After all, though we knew his troop quality was poor the French had not conquered half of Europe merely by being the best-dressed soldiers around!

Teniente-General de Quesada was left standing orders regarding his defense of the crossings, while we performed a flank march and descended behind the French left flank. Wary of any trickery, we dispatched brave Astevidas to scout for any French to our right, and thence to shadow them... or rejoin us.

That was the last we saw of Astevidas or his brigade until the end of the fight.

As we approached Vedel's flank, we spied French cavalry out behind our own right flank and shot a cautionary courier off to Astevidas. This impelled us to move faster as we could not rely on the French being unaware of our movements as we rested and formed behind them - so we transferred our march to a more easterly road, determining to pry him away from the river to open up an avenue of retreat if it were required, and else to allow Quesada's men to more easily support us.

Marching south I formed my lead brigade (Sarsfield's) with my battery just behind it on the ridge and set about engaging the French. Three regiments moved forward to fix the French foot - leaving room for Trenio's brigade to slide around our left and concentrate on the crossing area - while the others pushed up the hill to engage the French guns, capturing two (from memory) and finally being forced into square in the face of the French horse, who were content to stand scarce ten feet away from our foot and menace them while the remaining French guns belched canister into my lines.

The fighting continued all across the line, and around the time that we finally fell back from the hill - French foot coming from their reserve somewhere to shoot into our tight formations - we observed further French columns in the distance. With still no sign of Astevidas - and fearing the worst - we determined that our intelligence was faulty and that the French were in the area in force.

At that stage I communicated with Sarsfield and Trenio that our new focus was to force a crossing and reunite with de Quesada. Focusing our efforts we were able to - if not break through - then at least force back Vedel's blocking elements. Marching briskly along the riverside we were able to get our guns and our lead brigade across, and were preparing to launch a counter-attack to force the French from the crossing to allow Trenio to join us when a heavy storm hit, putting an abrupt end to hostilities.

I have no notion of what was going on to our south, as de Quesada has yet to report for his debriefing but to my mind the French army proved superior in numbers overall, as well as of cavalry and artillery. His quality and weapons were also superior, and it is a testament to Spanish courage and our leaders that we fared as well as we did. While we did not triumph over the field, neither were we forced back from it and our wounded will have the shelter of Atalayuclas itself to recover and ready themselves for the days to come.

Viva Valencia! Viva Espagna!

Gen Llamas

Not much to report from Bordelon (french cavalry in the north). As trotting along roads was too exhaustive for my men   The only action was when I captured a routed Spanish regiment.
Ah one nice thing at the battle start. I noticed a lone rider coming from the north, I used my binoculars but was unable to identify his uniform. He rode directly into my marching collumn and shortly after that I received a letter the rider was carrying, it was a courier to Gen Llamas. The courier was spanish and coming from the north! And yes, looking to the north I saw lots of Spanish troopers deploying only 500yards away.
Turning off the radar truly is spycing up the game  

Replay available here.

I'm uploading my fraps videos. One hour of SoW combat is six vids on a freebie account...

Gen. Llamas,

My division was positioned on the high ground east of the southern ford. The enemy there showed no interest in crossing, so I ordered Gen. Centerremona, (Steve), to the northern ford and prevent an enemy crossing. My orders from you were to keep any enemy in my presence occupied until your force could fall on their flank. This I did, although the accuracy of the French artillery fire was galling.

When I heard firing from the north and Gen Centerremona confirmed that Llamas had arrived, I ordered a general attack across both fords. The southern ford was quite narrow and it took longer than hoped to cross to the west side. The enemy fled wild eyed in terror at our approach, removing even his artillery for fear it too would become spoils of war.

As the brigades of Chemerra and Villacampa advanced pushing the outnumbered frenchmen up the ridge to the west, their cavalry advanced to halt the rout that was beginning to take place. My battalions quickly formed squares, but the cowardly french horsemen would not give battle, content to merely sit atop their inferior horses while their reinforced infantry closed and began shooting our perfectly formed ranks.

The situation was intolerable. We were half way up the french ridge but could move no farther. I ordered Gen. Petrameria to bring his cavalry into action and destroy one particularly troublesome enemy squadrons. His men advanced with parade ground perfection. However, a Swiss battalion fired a volley at this beautiful formation, enraging several of Petrameria's squadrons. They turned and charged, unable to draw up before they collided with a hastily formed Swiss square. Squadron after squadron tried to overrun the Swiss without success. Finally, Gen. Petrameria regained control of one squadron and attacked their french counterparts, driving them off the field. This squadron then proceeded to attack a hapless battery of guns, capturing at least two, but were unable to drag them away before a french battalion drove our fine cavalry off.

With our cavalry spent, and the enemy's still menacing our left, we could make no further headway up the ridge. I reluctantly called for our forces to recross the river. As Chemerra's battalions withdrew, I secretly hoped that the french cavalry would advance and try to prevent this. I would be most pleased to watch those so-called cavalrymen destroy themselves on our squares of iron. But the cowardly french had no stomach for further fighting. They were a spent force. So we showed them our backsides as we slowly made our way back to the east side of the river.

I am, &c, &c,
General Quesada

It is my understanding from seeing the huge shiner the general had the next morning over his left eye that General de Division Fresia, who commanded the French Chasseurs a Cheval attached to Vedel's division was galloping through the woods to organise his squadrons when he smacked his head on a low-hanging branch and was felled, unconscious, from his horse. This was about forty minutes into the battle and after that the Chasseurs did nothing. Its interesting to see that even stationary, leaderless French cavalry can scare Spanish infantry away.

Mr. Digby wrote:Replay available here.

I'm uploading my fraps videos. One hour of SoW combat is six vids on a freebie account...

Are you uploading the videos to a youtube account, Mr. Digby?

Can we know the losses in battle?

LEGIO_Suchet wrote:Can we know the losses in battle?

A few Frenchmen suffered from heat stroke, reloading too many times in the hot sun.

Three or four thousand Spanish peasants went down from musket and cannon fire.

Twas an awful scene for sure.

I wish I could accuse him of exaggerating... <_<

As a cunning stratagem, in the next engagement the Army of Valencia fights we hope to arm our men.

News is filtering out now from the region south of Cuenca that the Army of Valencia has suffered a grevious defeat.

The Spanish led by General Llamas were on the march from Valencia north-west towards Madrid, apparently with the Army of Murcia in support on their left flank, though news of General Villava's Murcian army is lacking at the present time.

One Spanish division led by General Quesada of about 12 battalions, 6 squadrons and 6 guns halted east of the Rio Jucar when a French division under General Vedel comprising 7 battalions, 5 squadrons and 12 guns was encountered at the small town of Atalayuclas, pinning it in place. The second Spanish division of similar size marched north, across the river south of Cuenca and came south to strike Vedel's left flank. The combined Spanish force significantly outnumbered the French in all but artillery and it seemed that Vedel, should he hold his ground, would surely be crushed.

The long flank march by the Spanish however took almost a week, and prior to this, when his cavalry had first encountered the Spanish some miles further east, Vedel sent news back and futher elements of General Dupont's corps arrived from Madrid, although they were tired from a hard march. Barbou's division of another 7 battalions with 16 guns plus a powerful cavalry division of 20 squadrons, half of them dragoons approached the battlefield along the road headed west towards Cervera. The French troops though were not of the best quality, being either Legions de Reserve and Garde de Paris regiments in the infantry and 'escadrons de marche' in the cavalry (temporary units administratively assembled for the purpose of moving replacements forward from their depots to the front line regiments). In the case of many corps in the French 'Armee d'Espagne' whole divisions are made up of these technically temporary formations. Only the artillery were front line troops.

The Spanish were an extreme mix of reliable regular regiments and squadrons, and enthusiastic but untrained raw volunteers, who had recently signed up in a spirit of patriotic fervour at the outbreak of the rebellion but lacking military skill. Arming so many new infantry regiments with muskets has even proved a problem and a mixture of weapons of different calibres and performance is the best that most of the volunteer units can hope for.

General Llamas commanding the whole Spanish force led his flanking division, that of General Saint March, down upon Vedel's left flank and commenced an aggressive attack, principally upon the brigade of Cassagne who was watching the northern ford at Atalayuclas with 3 battalions, and the hastily repositioned guns of Major Marin's battery.

The leading Spanish brigade, that of Pedro Sarsfield engaged two of Cassagne's battalions in a firefight across a stream with 2 battalions while 3 or 4 more rushed up a hill to Cassagne's left to charge Marin's battery. At least 2 guns were gallantly captured before French Chasseurs a Cheval led by General Fresia countercharged. A Swiss battalion of General Poinsot's brigade was moved north to assist but was driven off by canister fired from the captured guns, but the third battalion of Cassagne's brigade charged in fine style into the flank of one Spanish regiment, driving it off, before wheeling left to storm up the hill and retake both lost cannon.

This savage exchange seemed to take the fight out of Sarsfield's brigade which retired back down the slope and across the stream. General Trienio's brigade now arrived on it's left to put pressure on Cassagne's right at the northern ford. Poinsot had also moved a second battalion north to guard the ford but now General Quesada stirred and sent his division into the attack across both fords; Centerremona's brigade pushing columns over the southern ford along the main Madrid Highway while Chemerra's brigade came out of the woods along a by-way to press across the north ford.

Vedel just did not have enough troops close enough to the north ford and Trienio's brigade was able to bull its way past the ford defenders and get across, followed gradually by the weakened remnants of Sarsfield's brigade and Saint March's gun battery. A fierce firefight then followed as the French closed up to the river bank at the north ford and poured a terrible fire into a host of disorganised Spanish units that were fleeing across. After the charge on Major Marin's guns, this was probably the scene of the battle where the Spanish casualties were highest.

At the south ford on the main highway Quesada attacked with Centerremona's brigade which had several regular regiments, supported by General Petrameria's cavalry. Some progress was made and the French guns attached to the cavalry were mioved back too early and afterward took little part in the fighting. The powerful French artillery therefore, after an initially good showing in the opening exchange across the river, and against the first charge by Sarsfield, did not play a big role in the battle.

There was a cavalry fight at the south ford in which the steadfast Swiss battalion formed square and saw off numerous Spanish squadrons, capturing a colour from the 4th Sqn Cacadores de Olivencia although in turn the Spanish Dragons del Rey charged and defeated a French Chasseur squadron, routing it from the field.

The reason for the northern flanking column to press so energetically across the north ford and regain the east bank was because French troops could be seen behind them in the north and the posibility of being trapped against an uncrossable water barrier drove the Spanish to attack with much energy. General Chemerra's brigade did excellent service in counter-attacking and keeping the north ford clear enough for long enough to allow most of Llama's troops to escape.

With the north column now across the river, Quesada ordered his own attacks to fall back. Dupont and Barbou's division arrived to give the retreating Spanish a final push, mopping up a few routing units on the west bank. The battle was effectively over before Dupont arrived but his presence influenced Spaanish command decisions.

Initial casualty returns are: French, 200 killed, 800 wounded, 150 missing. Spanish 800 killed, 3000 wounded, 600 missing. These totals will certainly reduce (other than the deceased, obviously) once the walking wounded and some deserters rejoin their units. The Spanish captured several guns but these were retaken, no other guns were lost. One unit was captured, a squadron of Spanish cavalry that hurled itself at a Swiss square, its colour being taken. About 6 Spanish units are reported as having fled the field in disorder but despite its heavy defeat the Army of Valencia did hold together quite well, probably because there was no pursuit. Rumours are still abounding of the whereabouts of Llamas' other cavalry brigade, commanded by Genl Astevidas. It rode off west from Llama's column in the morning to search for any French force in that direction and hasn't been seen since!

Ike wrote:Are you uploading the videos to a youtube account, Mr. Digby?

I am. Is that bad? Its ridiculously slow. The video is in six parts and part one took 8 hours to upload and it only shows in 480 px so its almost useless to watch, you can't read any of the messages or see any detail.

Do you know of a better site? Maybe I could just put the vids up on my Mediafire account for you all to d/l but I wanted to put it somewhere public, so people can see how cool a HITS SoW MP battle is.

That's not bad, but as you've discovered, it can be difficult to upload a video of sufficient quality.  Other than one of the streaming "channels" - e.g., Livestream - I don't know of any other possibility.  Livestream isn't difficult to set up, but it is tedious as all these are since the streaming is intended to resemble an online TV station in its product.  I would think that the replay would be much better (at least for we who are addicts).  I expect your thought is to provide videos which can attract new players, however and for that I do not have any easy solution.  Re-formatting, a paid account at youtube, streaming the video ... perhaps a website or a blog where the videos can be "on-demand" and organized by campaign battle; i.e., "Atalayuclas-01" - "Atalayuclas-0x" in a suitably high resolution format.

Martin, I'm away right now, so can't check for definite but I beleive you can upload Full HD movies onto Youtube if you register. This involves giving them your mobile phone number. This is just for security purposes. They don't start spamming you. You might have to pay if you want several HD files uploading a month.
You might want to check out vimero too.

Mike

You have to pay at Vimero to upload. You only get 500Mb on a free account and each of the six vids I have is 4 Gigs... Its the time it takes to upload to YouTube that's the pain. I realy can't be arsed with something that will take a day per video.

There was mention by Michael Slauwhite of a video compression program used in conjunction with YouTube on the SOW forum. You might search over there.

Or, you can always upload the video to Dropbox, or one of the file sharing sites, which would give the capability to download and view using whatever media player is installed on individual PC's. Dropbox, for instance, allows 2 gigs of free storage.

I'm finding they all limit you on individual file size upload, MediaFire which I use is 200Mb, so none of those seems to be an option either

It looks like none of you is going to see this video unless I pay money or I burn CDs and put the damn things in the post!

I have compressed each video into a rar file and these are still 2.8 Gigs each. If anyone knows of any file sharing site that lets you upload files that big for free I'd appreciate it.

I have the replay file for this battle, but I don't know where the file goes. That is to say, do I create a folder called "replays" and put this file in it or ...? I have not found anything in the manual nor on the norbsoft forums that helps. I know the replay is in single play menu and I have it but don't know where the replay file itself belongs so the program can find it. Thanks.

It goes in /Work/Saved Games/Replay

If you don't have such a folder just create it.

To watch replays go to single player\load replay in the SP screen. I am not sure if you need the mods loaded that were loaded when the replay was made but I don't think so.

Thank you, sir.

Ike wrote:Thank you, sir.

Off topic, but. . . .

Been in the river this summer, Ike?

I live just downstream of the confluence of the Comal and the Guadalupe, been kayaking in the evenings lately.  The Comal sure is pretty now that beer cans have been banned.

http://comalrockinr.com/images/gallery/main/full/44.jpg

http://comalrockinr.com/images/gallery/main/full/248.jpg

That does look nice!

Ya, but without a bunch of Lone Star cans floating down the river, it's just not Texas.  

Mr. Digby wrote:That does look nice!

The beautiful, clear, cold Guadalupe behind my house.