"The Disaster at Fort Joseph", a Napoleonic game 4th March 1812 ..........

.......also known as The Battle of Fort Joseph 4th March 1812.........or how not to attack a Vauban fort!

A midweek game for myself and Ray with Postie as ringmaster..........

A small fort is barring Wellington's advance on Badajoz in Spain, so he has set up siege lines ready to pound the walls of Fort Joseph to create a breech into which his "scum of the earth" will try to assault and capture.
The French garrison hope to hold out long enough and inflict serious casualties on Wellington's army, thus forcing him to retire.

The Game or Disaster
Forces are already deployed ready for the bombardment and assault, obviously the British must capture the Fort and the French must beat of the assault.

I had to assault the fort from a prepared deployment, my 3 pieces of siege artillery could hit the fort but only causing damage on a D6 (the wall had 20 points of damage to be destroyed and cause a breach which only could be assaulted by units in column), the required damage took 14 turns to achieve!!!

Now I should have just rolled for 14 turns until I got the required damage but it was a game and dice had to be thrown..........

Fort Joseph awaits........

So does it's heavy guns.........

My siege guns...........

The British camp all peaceful..........

Wellington or Arthur Wellesley at the time.......

My Portuguese allies await.......

All ready, the British columns await the order..........

Supplies keep rolling in to camp over the vital bridge......

Crossing over the defenses caused immediate disorder.........

We used little stones to signify the pounding of the walls.......

I sent my light troops forward in skirmish order to try and lessen casualties and as a screen for the columns....

The regular infantry moved forward at speed but this would be their downfall........

Ladders at the ready for scaling the walls if a opening allowed it........

He had so little to do other than throw dice.........

The damage increases..........

More French infantry appear to line the walls........

The light infantry reach the defenses, Ray concentrated hid fire up to this point mostly on the columns......

A wider view of the assault.......... 

The light troops reach the bottom of the fort but there fire is quite ineffective (a single chance of a 6 on a D6 is all these figures get to fire)......

Same here but at least they no longer receive artillery fire.......

The damage still builds........

The remnants of a British column..........

I should mention my poor Portuguese allies who had suffered badly under the French fire.......

I speedily throw my two remaining columns in to the now opened breach.......

One round of canister later..........

By now Ray has brought more units out in the courtyard to face the columns (he still had some more units not yet deployed) and the game was called very next turn due to the columns being massacred...... 

An interesting game (another word for disaster) especially for an attacker, would things have been better with reducing the walls before the assault, maybe, Ray was lucky on the dice but he was rolling 4,5 and 6 at

 effective range (sometimes up to 5 dice) and close range he was rolling 3,4,5,6 (sometimes up to 8 dice) and my best was a 6 for virtually every shot and as I said on;y one dice most of the time but that's wargaming......


........but we finished this game quite quick and sorted out another game and this was a different story or as the legend will state "Is that cauldron attached?"

More to come......