Campaign Report #3

Our campaign continued yesterday afternoon with two battles being fought out on the table top.  The smaller of the two affairs saw a French brigade, supported by one of English pushing in an attack on Von Daun's Austrian grenadiers and a brigade of cavalry.  The Austrians only had to hold a line along a road to win, and their orders reflected this.  The French, on the other hand, were obligated to attack as they were in foreign territory.  Von Daun's grenadiers were fighting in their third action.  Despite this, they were still quite formidable.  The French had suffered a few losses in a previous battle.  The English and the Austrian cavalry were at full strength.

The English were fortunate as the cavalry were on hold orders and could not change orders throughout the game.  The red coats were able to shoot up the heavy cavalry men with negligible loss to themselves.  The French were not so lucky.  Given an assault order they marched into the withering fire of the men in bearskins and suffered accordingly.  They did manage to win a mele, but Austrian canister snuffed out the survivors.  The French brigade ultimately broke with over 50% casualties.

The courageous French attack, but to no avail.

The brigade prior to the advance. The dice indicate losses from the previous battle.

The British battalions face off against the defending Austrian cavalry.

On the other table the much larger engagement took place.  Five Russian brigades were charged with taking a major Prussian town defended by three Prussian brigades.  While the Russians had two brigades of cavalry at the beginning of the battle, the Prussians had none and this was a deciding factor.

Here are the Prussian positions before the start of the battle.

The Russian hoards poised to attack.

A brigade of Russian hussars were very successful on the left flank.  By the end of the action they had literally destroyed the Prussian infantry defending the town itself.  On the right, however, it took time to deploy into line.  And by the time the attack went in the Prussians received some much needed reinforcements in just the right place;  a brigade of heavy cavalry entered from behind the Russian right flank.
They immediately attacked and destroyed a couple of battalions before they were halted by the Russian heavies that have been in support.

Prussian cavalry hits the Czar's men in the rear.

But before things get out of hand, the well-placed Russian cavalry reserve is able to stop the Prussian threat cold.

It was at about this point that we had to stop the game due to time limitations.  Russian losses had been high, but they were declared the winners as they had captured the town and had inflicted substantial casualties themselves.

The Russian hussars in the process of mauling Moritz's brigade, which would ultimately lead to the Russian victory.