Finishing the resources I am posting for my Vitoria project, for now, I have posted a historical narrative on the battles page, together with a brochure on the battle published by Vitoria’s tourist office on the battle.

The historical narrative is based on an article I wrote a year ago, but which wasn’t accepted for publication. It was the first part of a two part series; the second covered wargaming the battle, and evolved into the scenario already posted. The editor wanted more wargame and less history. It is not very detailed, but gives a narrative that is much clearer, and I think more accurate than most versions that get published. That is partly because jean Sarramon provides a more complete narrative from the French side than the usual sources used by English-language authors, which throws a bit more light on things. Also my researches into the orders of battle gives a stronger grasp on the numbers involved than most. And I haven’t followed the British fashion of having large slabs of direct quotes from memoirs to carry large parts of the narrative. This can help provide an atmosphere and provide some interesting angles – but it isn’t really proper history. The historian needs to provide an opinion on how reliable theses accounts are.

The Vitoria brochure is interesting. It does not provide much in the way of historical narrative, although it has the best published battle map that I’ve seen – for showing the movements of the combatants anyway. it also provides some details and pictures from a more local perspective, which helps fill out the picture.