Richard and I undertook another 800 point Napoleon’s Battles
game. This time it was an X meeting
engagement with Richard’s Russians coming in from one corner of the table and his
Austrians from the other. To meet them I
had two corps coming in from each corner on my side of the table. The rationale was that the surrounding
terrain was rough and that the centre of the table represented a strategic road
junction that would allow the armies to link up.
We set the battle in April 1809, sunrise was at 5:30 and we
figured the armies would be well on the way by 9:30 and set that as the start
time. The French decided to come on straight
away in march column while the Russians and Austrians decided to take two turns
to deploy and come on ready to fight.
This was probably the most critical decision of the game.
In the above picture the French I Corps cavalry is racing
ahead while the II Corps has reached the centre and is about to start the
challenge of deploying. The two best
corps commanders where on this flank and would need all the skill to keep
things moving. Luckily they passed all
their command tests.
On the French right the III Corps has already deployed into
column while the Guard Light Cavalry, represented by my hodge podge collection
of red lancer figures, is coming on as the lead element of the Guard Corps.
The Austrians can be seen approaching on the French right. They looked menacing, but were plagued with
command problems that slowed them down.
The French on the left can see where they must go (I love
the officer in the front pointing the way).
The Russians appear in the distance and seem far away. They were in fact the larger force, but were
hemmed in by the terrain for a while.
On the French left the time has now reached 13:00 and
deployment has just about completed.
Phew! The French cavalry has
massed both here and in the centre ...
Ready to attack the
Russians.
After two hours of fighting the Russians had been halted,
but not before they threw in their Guard cavalry. The Russian artillery had not been very
effective and the French got an early advantage when they knocked out a number
of the Russian batteries.
The Austrians had also been held with some valiant fighting
by a brigade of Old Guard which had been flung forward in order to preserve the
integrity of the French central position (which had allowed the French army
commander to take control of all four of his corps and deploy troops to either
side as the situation called for it).
The above picture also shows the damage the Russian Guard Cavalry had
done, but it was now a spent force and about to be blown away. The French Carabineers lead by a newly
painted general were about to charge the Austrians who had been pinned by the
Old Guard. However it was at this stage
that we ended the game with Austrian and Russian 15:00 turn. Just about all my troops had been engaged,
with the exception of the reserve horse artillery which I had been unusually
tardy in bringing up – I should have force marched them.
When I had selected this army I found I was one corps commander
short. With just over a week to go I was
able to select the figures from my lead mountain, clean them up and paint them,
using my trusty Funcken book as a guide.
And very pleased I am too with the Old Glory Marshal Ney
figure and ADC.
The Napoleon’s Battles rules played well, although we did
have to look up a few tricky things with the mass of cavalry react, recall and
pursuit moves that occurred.
I also tried colour coding the labels and while successful,
next time I will use darker shades to denote corps and divisions and also better space out the letters used to denote the formations as I, II and III all blur when viewed peering down at the table from a few feet.
It was a pleasure to be able run this army using the figures
I have collected over the last twenty years as well as the joy of the recent
addition. It represented just about all the
French I have, with only a few stands spare and a couple of foreign brigades
not used (although my Hessians were).
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