The Silver Bayonet – Spain 1810

Most people when they think about the Napoleonic Wars, they think about the Battle of Austerlitz, Trafalgar or Waterloo, but quite a long period of the war was fought on the Iberian Pensinular, in Portugal and Spain, but if you want to have a quick intro, there are three YouTube videos bringing you up to speed in different levels of depth:

• History Matters - Why did Napoleon betray Spain? (3m 23s)
• Feature History - The Peninsular War (12m 14s)
• Epic History - The Peninsular War (19m 50s)

But why of all conflicts the Iberian theatre of war? This would give me the chance to re-use some of the mediterranean terrain that I have for Bolt Action and the Crusades, and I like using terrain across multiple settings, as it saves room and time.

And this project idea brewed for quite some time on the back burner. It is no secret, I am a fan of the works of Paul Hicks, and at some point I was made aware that he sculpted Napoleonics, but not just any Napoleonics, but the 95th rifles, a unit from an old tv-show with Sean Bean, where he actually sees the end of the day to film 16 episodes over 15 years - we're talking about Sharpe.

So I got two codes of the infantry and the two heroes, Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper on foot and mounted. This should be enough for most skirmishes, like I saw with the Horse & Musket ruleset on TableTopia back in 2019. Or for other rule sets, like A Song of Drums & Shakos, but certainly smaller than Chosen Men (as that is more on Saga size-level).

For the enemy, I initially went with some french soldiers by the Perrys, and split two boxes with Gregor of French Infantry (FN100 French Infantry and FN260 Elite Companies). But first off all the FN100 boxed set, is the wrong one for the Peninsular theatre of war, the FN250 French Infantry Battalion would have been more appropiate. Yet more important, while these are without a doubt stunning miniatures, they are designed for regiments, rather large combat and not the dynamic nature I was going for with a skirmisher.

Yet, they won't just slumber in my pile of opportunities, but will be redirected as body-donours for the Turnip28 idea.

Therefore I went back to Brigade Miniatures and replaced them with various more dynamic poses of French and extended the British, along with bringing Spaniards to the mix, but not just with the settings mentioned above, but actually going further and adding the aspect of Horror, extending the rules set to include The Silver Bayonet as well.

And this gave me another task, because while I have the miniatures for the historic parts and some a bit deeper than basic knowledge about the Peninsular Wars, I know need to read and dig in on Iberian Folklore, to add the matching elements of horror to these. I had a great intro to the game by Martin / Zigor on a convention, and the way he embedded his knowledge about the Hessian history into the fictional scenario, is something that I'd like to reach with my games as well, but for Spain.

As I said above, this idea has been around for a while now and in the mean time Silver Bayonet really hit it off, as the initial rulebook and first supplement (The Carpathians) already had me excited, but now Osprey and Northstar added more and more fitting content to the game, with Canada, Egypt and Italy. Lucky for you - Osprey was so kind to send me these books and we will take a closer look into them over the next months, while setting up two or three bands ourself and researching the spanish folklore for matching scenarios and encounters.