The War of the Aragon Succession - a mini-campaign

 Very keen to try out Bob Cordery's Napoleonic Campaign rules (see HERE), I set up a quick mini-campaign using part of the Waddington's Campaign Map Bob has re-drawn.

The setting is as follows - The King of Aragon has died leaving two potential candidates for his throne. The preferred candidate for the nobility of Aragon is the dashing Prince Carlos, soldier, duelist and all round good huevo. The other candidate, Prince Alfonso, is related to the King of Francia, and is definitely from the very shallow end of the gene pool (almost the foot bath). Tensions between the two Kingdoms rise and both mobilize their forces.

Armies of Aragon (left) and Francia (right) encamped

Francian forces cross the border and war is declared

The first clash of armies - Aragon army 4 v Francia army 2

Battles were fought using 3x3 PW rules. General's on both sides were instructed to watch attrition rates and withdraw where deemed prudent.

Battle 1

In the first battle, Francia's Army 2 (blue) quickly sent Aragon's Army 4 (yellow) into retreat. They holed up in the nearest town whilst the Francian's camped outside.

Further map moves led to a clash between the two Army Threes

Battle 2 

In the second battle casualties on both sides were a little higher but again the force from Aragon backed out first. Once the Francian Army had patched up the wounded and collected the troops who had wandered off, the General ordered a pursuit of the enemy!

Army Threes clash again!

Battle 3

Despite their reduced size, the two armies fought hard, but once again Francia prevailed. Aragon now had two armies licking their wounds inside city walls. Francia's Army Two was pinning down one of these, whilst their Army Three had withdrawn. This left Army Four fresh and heading for the Capital.

Aragon's Army Two rushed off to stop Francia's Army Four heading for the capital

Battle 4

The fourth battle saw Aragon desperate for a victory and fighting with little regard for loss. As the attacking side I deemed it necessary for Yellow to push Blue off his baseline at some point. With the woods on their left flank however Blue stoically held their ground despite great loss. At the end of the day Yellow withdrew his remaining troops. He had damaged the Francian force sufficiently to slow down their march on the Capital, however with 4 straight defeats the War was lost and the Nobles of Aragon sued for peace.

Please note I played a fast campaign with the minimum of record keeping and didn't worry about recording the days / months. 

The rules worked well and I can imagine a more structured approach to the system with more time given to battles and records creating a really enjoyable campaign. 

I note that since I started typing this Bob has posted changes to the rules!! C'est la guerre.