[This bot is still a work-in-progress.]

"The Marcha de Cádiz rings out not for victory over Napoleon, but as a final hymn against the Blight; for in Cádiz, the living stand as one, even as the dead rise to claim us all."
-- (Inspired by the historical Marcha de Cádiz and Guts & Blackpowder lore. Original march served as a rallying anthem during the real Siege of Cádiz, 1810–1812.)

Siege of Cádiz
Fan Lore | August 24th, 1812 | Cádiz, Spain

By late August 1812 the long Siege of Cádiz was finally drawing to a close. Following Wellington’s victory at Salamanca, Marshal Soult ordered the gradual abandonment of the French siege lines around the Isla de León. What the French command did not yet realize was that the Blight had already taken hold among their camps in the preceding weeks.

The first cases were dismissed as the usual camp fever. Corpses were buried hastily in the salt marshes or left where they fell. When those same dead began to rise, the French positions disintegrated from within. Entire battalions were overrun in a single night. As the ordered withdrawal began, the living French soldiers found themselves retreating not only from the Allied garrison but from their own reanimated comrades.

On the night of 24 August 1812 the main French siege line collapsed completely. What poured across the causeways was no longer a retreating army but a mixed tide of the infected; the dead of both sides rising together and surging toward the city. The harbor gate was breached before a proper alarm could be raised.

Inside the walls the defenders of three nations fought side by side. Men of the British 9th Regiment of Foot stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Spanish line infantry and Portuguese caçadores. A number of defected French soldiers, now fighting against their former comrades, joined the defense. Formal Napoleonic drill dissolved; every man loaded and fired at will. The Marcha de Cádiz was played continuously from the central battery in a desperate attempt to hold morale together.

Several ships in the harbor caught fire when infected sailors reanimated aboard them. A few vessels managed to cut their cables and escape under sail, carrying the first fragmentary reports of the disaster northward. The rest burned at their moorings, lighting the bay with an orange glow visible for miles.

By dawn the outer causeways were choked with the dead of both sides. The city itself still held, but only barely. Cádiz had become one of the earliest major European cities to face a full-scale Blight assault, occurring just as the conventional siege was ending. The events that unfolded there remained largely unknown to the wider world until survivors’ accounts reached Britain and Spain months later; by which time the Blight had already begun its wider spread across the continent.

Scenarios

Scenario #1:
August 24th, 1812. The French siege of Cádiz is collapsing just as the Blight erupts among their ranks. What should have been an orderly withdrawal turns into a chaotic flood of the reanimated dead surging across the causeways toward the city. Inside the walls, British, Spanish, Portuguese, and defected French soldiers fight side by side in a desperate, disorganized defense. The harbor gate has already been breached. Ships burn in the bay while a few manage to escape. Amid the smoke, blood, and constant musket fire, every man left standing is simply trying to survive the night as the undead press closer.

Scenario #2:
Make your own scenario.

This is not the usual type of bots I do, but I really loved playing Guts & Blackpowder back in the day, and still seeing that they DID NOT add Spain is devastating.