Game of the Week, Dec 1-7

This week’s Game of the Week marches you to the hills, rivers, and fortress towns of Spain and Portugal. Wellington’s Peninsular War, from our Napoleonic Battles series, puts you in command of coalition forces fighting to drive Napoleon’s armies out of Iberia – or in the boots of the marshals tasked with holding the “Spanish Ulcer” together.

Available at 25% off all week until 7 December, Wellington’s Peninsular War complements Bonaparte’s Peninsular War to give you near-complete coverage of the long, grinding campaign in the Peninsula – from early disasters and retreats to the hard-fought road to victory. Together with Bonaparte’s Peninsular War, our Game of the Week gives you an almost complete view of the Iberian campaigns, but each game is fully self-contained, so you can enjoy Wellington’s Peninsular War without needing the other.

From Corunna to Vitoria — The Spanish Ulcer

By the winter of 1808–09, Napoleon’s bid to subdue Spain and Portugal had already gone badly off script. What began as an attempt to enforce the Continental System and reshape the Spanish Bourbon monarchy soon spiralled into full-scale occupation, popular uprisings, and a brutal war that tied down hundreds of thousands of French troops.

The Third of May 1808, by Francisco Goya

Into this chaos marched a British expeditionary force under Sir John Moore. Ordered first to support Spanish resistance and then to withdraw in the face of Napoleon’s massive winter offensive, Moore chose to retreat toward the Galician port of Corunna, drawing French forces after him and buying time for the rest of the army to escape. The fighting retreat across snow-covered mountains, harried by French columns and plagued by exhaustion and indiscipline, ended with Moore mortally wounded on the field in January 1809 – but his army was largely saved.

While Moore’s men were fighting their way to the transports, a relatively obscure general named Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, was preparing to return to Portugal. Still dismissed by some in Britain – and loudly by his French opponents – as the “Sepoy General” whose victories had been won “only” in India, he now faced the far greater challenge of rebuilding the Allied position in Iberia. 

Over the next five years, he would prove those critics wrong, forging a truly multinational coalition army of British, Portuguese, and later Spanish formations, supported by guerrillas and local militias who made French occupation a daily ordeal.

“It is quite impossible for me or any other man to command a British army under the existing system. We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”

- Arthur Wellesley to Henry Bathurst, 2 July 1813

The early years of the war saw vicious fighting across Spain. In the east, General Suchet carved out a reputation as perhaps Napoleon’s most effective Peninsular commander, battering his way through Aragon and Valencia in a series of battles and sieges – Alcañiz, María, Belchite, and the grim struggle for Zaragoza. These actions, represented in Wellington’s Peninsular War, showcase the often-overlooked campaigns away from Wellington’s main front.

In Portugal, Wellesley combined offensive thrusts with carefully prepared defensive lines. After checking Masséna’s 1810 invasion (major actions featured in Bonaparte’s Peninsular War), he oversaw the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras – a vast fortified system north of Lisbon that turned the French advance into a logistical nightmare. Unable to break the lines or live off a countryside stripped bare, the French eventually retreated, harried by Anglo-Portuguese troops and Portuguese militia.

By 1812, the strategic balance had shifted. With French resources increasingly consumed by commitments in Russia and Central Europe, Wellington seized the initiative. The storming of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz (both featured in Bonaparte’s Peninsular War) opened the gateway into Spain at terrible cost. From these blood-soaked sieges, the army marched on to Salamanca, where Wellington exploited a sudden French deployment error to deliver one of his most brilliant battlefield victories – a major action fully represented in Wellington’s Peninsular War.

The following year brought the climax of the Peninsular War. In June 1813, Wellington maneuvered around French positions in northern Spain, threatening their lines of communication and forcing King Joseph and his marshals back toward Vitoria. The sprawling battle that followed saw French resistance collapse under converging Allied attacks, turning retreat into rout and opening the road to the Pyrenees – and eventually into France itself. Vitoria, along with the associated actions at Morales, Osma, Millan, and Burgos, forms a major centerpiece of Wellington’s Peninsular War.

"C’est l’ulcère espagnol qui m’a perdu"

“It was the Spanish Ulcer which ruined me.”

- Napoleon Bonaparte, as quoted by John Holland Rose

Yet the war was never just a sequence of set-piece battles. Guerrilla warfare, sieges, coastal raids, and small actions along vital supply routes all played their part in wearing down the French. Wellington’s Peninsular War captures that breadth: from brigade-sized clashes and raids to full-scale battles like Salamanca and Vitoria.

The Battle of Salamanca, 22 July 1812, watercolor by Richard Simkin

Taken together with Bonaparte’s Peninsular War, this title lets you follow the conflict from the early uprisings and French advances through to the point where Napoleon’s empire begins to crack at its southwestern edge. You can replay the historical campaigns, explore "what if" branches, or build your own Peninsular battles on the extensive map set – tracing the long road from retreat at Corunna to hard-won victory on the Ebro and beyond.

For some insight into why there are two titles covering this topic, one can refer to the Design Notes:

The Peninsular War was one of the longest and most drawn-out campaigns of the Napoleonic War; a piece of Imperial regime-change designed to close off the last European ports open to British trade, which instead developed into the ‘Spanish Ulcer’ that sapped the strength of Napoleon’s empire and left him to fight a two-front war that would ultimately destroy him.

From the outset, it was clear that it would be impossible to incorporate all the actions of this conflict into a single game. It also quickly became apparent that neither a strictly chronological, nor a strictly geographic, distinction could be made to divide the war into two manageable portions. The first title in this series, ‘Bonaparte’s Peninsular War’ focused on the defense of Portugal from the three successive French efforts to capture that country in 1807-08, 1809, and 1810-11, with the last of these campaigns also including the fighting for the strategically vital border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo, Almeida, and Badajoz during 1811 and early 1812, as the allies began to shift back to the offensive. In addition, that title also included the battles fought in Spain in the immediate aftermath of the uprising of 1808, and the battles fought in south-western Spain during 1809 and 1810.

This second title completes the picture. The focus is on four main campaigns. Firstly, that of late-1808 into January 1809 when Napoleon intervened in the Peninsula in person and led the veterans of the Grande Armée to join the survivors of his failed first invasion attempt and sought to crush the armies of the Spanish Juntas and the British under Sir John Moore who sought to come to their aid. The climax of this campaign was the French capture of Madrid and Moore’s posthumous victory at Corunna which bought time to evacuate his troops. The next campaign is that by the French to secure Eastern Spain, culminating, after a series of initial setbacks, with Suchet’s advance from Saragossa to Valencia over the course of 1809-1812, snapping up fortresses and defeating the armies that were sent to cover them. His victory, however, was never entirely complete and 1813-1814 in this theatre saw British troops land to aid the resurgent Spanish forces. The last two campaigns represent Wellington’s attempts to liberate Spain. The first of these, in 1812, saw what was arguably his greatest battlefield victory at Salamanca but ultimately ended with overstretch and a dangerous retreat back to Portugal. The second, launched in the summer of 1813, saw the combined French armies crushed at Vitoria followed by an advance that eventually took the allies over the Pyrenees to Bayonne and Toulouse. Also included in the game are a small number of standalone battles that fall outside the main four campaigns, most notably the 1806 Battle of Maida – fought in Italy rather than Spain, this nevertheless saw many future Peninsular commanders and was the first British victory against the French since the conclusion of the Egyptian campaign five years previously.

You can read the entire 22-page Designer Notes document here.

What’s in the Game

Wellington’s Peninsular War is one of the larger titles in the Napoleonic Battles series, with 184 scenarios covering everything from small cavalry clashes and rearguard actions to sprawling multi-day battles and full campaigns.

Three linked campaign games let you fight through 1809, 1812, and 1813, making operational decisions about march routes, engagements, and reinforcements while living with the consequences in subsequent battles.

At the tactical level, the series uses 100-meter hexes and 10–15 minute turns, with units typically representing battalions, supported by batteries, squadrons, and specialist companies. This scale allows you to appreciate the fine detail of Napoleonic combat – skirmish lines, grand batteries, assault columns, and cavalry charges – while still managing corps-sized forces on richly detailed maps.

The master map, over 55,000 hexes in size, spans key regions of Spain and Portugal, and is subdivided into more than 50 smaller maps for focused actions such as the fighting around Zaragoza, the approach to Salamanca, or the fields and streams around Vitoria.

Orders of battle include French, British, Portuguese, and Spanish formations, along with additional units for hypothetical situations. Campaign and scenario editors allow you to tweak existing designs or build your own, while the usual suite of play options – AI, PBEM, LAN/Internet, and hot seat – makes it easy to find the style of play that suits you.

Bibliography and Video Recommendations

If Wellington’s Peninsular War sparks a deeper interest in the campaign, here are some suggested readings (Clicking the cover links you to Amazon):

David Gates, The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War – a classic single-volume narrative that balances operations, politics, and personalities across the whole conflict.

Charles Esdaile, The Peninsular War: A New History – a modern, analytical overview that places battles in their wider social and political context, drawing heavily on Iberian sources.

Sir Charles Oman, A History of the Peninsular War (7 vols.) – the monumental early twentieth-century study, still invaluable for its detail on marches, orders of battle, and tactical narratives.

Rory Muir, Wellington: The Path to Victory 1769–1814 – a deeply researched biography that follows Wellesley from India to the decisive campaigns in Iberia, with careful attention to his generalship and coalition management.

Although we normally keep our recommendations to non‑fiction, it’s impossible to discuss the Peninsular War in popular culture without mentioning Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” novels. Set against the backdrop of Wellesley’s campaigns, they offer fast‑paced, well‑researched historical fiction that brings the era’s battles, landscapes, and personalities vividly to life. Part of the series was adapted into a TV series starring Sean Bean (one of the few series in which Sean Bean's character does not meet an early death 😉). 

You will also find a growing number of Napoleonic Battles videos on YouTube, including playthroughs and tutorials that feature Wellington’s Peninsular War and showcase different approaches to its larger campaigns and smaller scenarios.

 

Screenshots

Below, you can add screenshots from Wellington’s Peninsular War to give readers a feel for the updated 2D and 3D views, the varied Peninsular terrain, and the scale of the engagements. Clicking a screenshot opens it in full resolution.

 

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Wellington’s Peninsular War. Whether you are refighting Salamanca and Vitoria or discovering these campaigns for the first time, the game offers countless hours of historical tactical and operational decision-making at a very attractive price.