Campaign in Iberia Begins

12e Chasseurs a Cheval in Spain. Double click to enlarge.

I am very excited to announce that our Iberian Campaigns of 1808-1814 have commenced and we will be playing our first campaign game next Saturday, March 16, 2013 in Brown Deer, WI at Chez Protz. Click on the link below to read the first chapter of Major General William Justinian Pettygree's journal of the events that took place in the Iberian Peninsula from 1808 to 1814.

Pettygree's Campaigns In Iberia

The story will be conducted in a series of chapters in the same manner that Bill has done his Colonial Campaigns of another member of the Pettygree clan, serving in India and Africa during the 1890s. So follow the link above, book mark it, and keep abreast of the adventures of the Major General as he defends Portugal and British honor from the legions of the Corsican Ogre, old Bones A Part himself.

The first encounter will occur during early 1809 near Oporto in Portugal. Marshal Soult's army is intent on invading Portugal and evicting the British presence in the country. His vanguard is already working its way south, even as you read this and so Major General Pettygree has begun to marshal his forces in the Lisbon garrison to deal with this threat.

In the picture above, the French chasseurs a cheval are from Elite Miniatures, as is the colonel in the bearskin colpak, who watches as his squadrons move through a small town in Spain. The accompanying 24e de Legere battalion is comprised of the original Dave Alsop Old Glory special edition figures. These are real beauties and I liked them so much, that I was loathe to part with them when I sold off my 28mm Napoleonic collection. Little did I know that some five years later, I would be glad that I kept them, for they are a key unit in the French order of battle in Iberia during the campaign. 

The civilians are from the Perry Carlist Wars collection and the buildings and trees were all constructed by the talented Herb Gundt. I actually got my fingers dirty and made the road sections, back in about 1992, as I recall.