French:
Corps: (Skilled) Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult
1er Division: (Skilled)(Charismatic) Louis-Vincent-Joseph Le Blond de Saint-Hilaire
-large, ave, vet. Light Infantry (6e et 21e Regiments d'Infanterie Legere)
-small, ave, dr. Line Infantry (25e Regiment d'Infanterie de Ligne)
-small, ave, vet. med. arty (1er/6e Regiment d'Artillerie-a-Pied)
2e Division: (Skilled)(Charismatic) Dominique-Joseph René Vandamme
-all 3 units as 1e division
3e Division: (Competent) Claude Just Alexandre Louis Legrand
-2 small, ave, dr. Line Infantry
-1 small ave, conscript (dismounted dragoons)
4e Division: (Competent) Pierre Margaron
-3 small, superior, drilled hussards
Austrian army can be supplied by Dead., but it was the toughest one I'd come upon in all our campaigning. Almost all small units, which was nice! [French hits actually hit instead of one always bouncing off endless smarmy swarms of large Austrian units.] But everything was superior and/or veteran. Yikes!
Despite a +5 initiative, the sly Austrians gained the initiative.
-two large clumps of woods on French left flank; nice river coming out of Austrian left flank and going off into French right flank; two building areas left of French centre; clump of rough just past centre line to the right of French centre
1. 3e division set up to enter the buildings and delay the Austrian right...dragoons failed to enter and were soon swarmed, retreating to French centre rear on the hill there
-other building was entered and defended when a unit of superior Austrian grenadiers (wearing pink) failed to obey orders and enter the place.
Said pinks were soon to be shot up and retired wavering, never to be seen in the active part of the field again.-This division basically did its best to delay the Austrian right, forming up with a unit of hussards on the hill the defender gets to place in his centre. They managed to hold, with the loss of 1 line unit (the one in the 2nd building, beaten down by many Austrian shots), throughout the battle. Nappy made note to send Legrand a bottle of brandy!
2. The two large veteran columns of light infantry plodded forward against the Austrian centre-left, hung up a bit by waiting for their artillery support on each side to prolong and a clump of rough that slowed us down. The Austrians left the area beyond the river empty, so a unit of hussards drove across it and down opposite the Austrian flank, but it took us some time to get across into the Austrian rear since they had a unit of cuirassiers in the way.
-one large light unit charged some Austrian infantry and was intercepted by Austrian cuirassiers. With support of the other large light unit, both units fighting wavered and the Austrians skulkered back into their lines. Unfortunately, our lights, despite rolling 4 dice for cohesion, failed to rally a level, and this further slowed down our advance into the faltering Austrians in front of us, and letting their right flank pound poor old Legrands troops almost to the point of collapse.
-artillery is nice, esp. veteran, but oiiii...too slow!
-Austrian wavering square...I couldn't get within close of it for eons, and despite hitting it with something like 12-16 shots, hitting 6+ each time, I couldn't do anything to it! Plus, the cursed fiends were always bolstering back up because of rerolls or too many dice!!!!
3. Battle was finally won when two Austrian infantry units, one directly in front of the other, took massive French shooting and broke, causing the dominoes to cascade, at the same time as the Austrian left was finally cracking under the pressure of those two large French light infantry columns + hussards coming over the river. The 3e division, managing to hold off something like twice or three times their numbers, with only 1 unit breaking, were probably the saviours of the day, much like that other famed battle of a similar, but less glamorous, name.
Apologies for no photos. The boys, a year later, are almost completely painted on both sides of the field. Perhaps next battle, a refight of this one (Deadtorlitz???)(Ominous sounding, n'est-ce pas?), will see a couple select photos.
This was probably the best balanced French army I've run. It's small and expensive, but command control was excellent. We might drop the veteran status of the infantry, since as drilled, with their charismatic divisional commanders, they will still have 3 dice for cohesion tests. This will give us another unit of something.
But the Austrians, in this incarnation, were tough.
