WSS: Set-Up for Another Playtest

 Gaming via Zoom on Friday, so I've been setting up the table. This will be the little-known Battle of the Beutelbach, which must have been in 1703, I guess, on an unusually flat area of  Bavaria. I needed some photos for the participants, so it seemed sensible to post them here as well.

This is the first-cut set-up, still a little adjustment allowed before we kick off on Friday. Here is the view from the Bavarian left flank. That stream is just a little watersplash.

And now from the Bavarian right flank. Since the micro-dice will be completely invisible on the Zoom session, there will be an issue of coloured counters, to denote unit status, before we start.

A drone shot from behind the Imperial position - no-one in the little hamlet of Staubhof yet, so the residents can shift the glass and china into the cellar.

10am start Friday - better read the rules again - there are some changes in the turn sequence, so a quick guideline note to keep me right would be a good idea.

*********** Late Edit ***********

 

And now an extra photo for Nature lovers - here are Die Schwäne von Staubhof...

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WSS: The Missing Flag Appears

 Quick footnote to yesterday's game - I've now fitted a 75cm (in scale!) flag to the Imperial C-in-C stand, and photos are necessary. I've also added the requisite magnetic sheet, and the chaps are now safely stored away with their army in the Really Useful Boxes.

I'm pleased because getting this group painted and based has been another hanging-around task, but am also interested because it gave me a chance try out some combinations of figure makers.

Here they are - the gentleman in the brown (civilian) coat is the boss - he could be Prince Eugene himself if it weren't for the moustache. Mind you, old PE wore some pretty outrageous wigs, so a false muzzer can't be completely out of the question? - maybe it was Mo-vember?

The commander is a Les Higgins casting on a Higgins horse, which is an obvious and standard arrangement hereabouts; the adjutant in the blue coat is an Irregular casting on an SHQ (ECW period) horse, and the standard bearer is Irregular on a Hinton Hunt ECW horse, and I'm delighted to see that these all work nicely, and are happily compatible with each other.

 

The flag - if you have exceptional eyesight - is the correct edition of the arms of the Holy Roman Empire for the time of Leopold I. It would be a terrible thing, I'm sure you'll agree, if I had got that wrong.

WSS: Playtest at Mönchröden - the Game

 Yesterday's playtest by Zoom went ahead - Goya very kindly commanded the Austrians. The game went quite nicely - I'm a little disappointed by how some bits of the rules played out, but that was the whole point of the exercise, and the labs are tooling up to engineer some fixes! The photos of the initial set-up can be found in my previous post.

 

General photo, quite early in the action, showing the legendary General Graf Von Fugger lining up the Cuirassiers of Jung-Darmstadt and Gronsfeld, next to the small village of Hopf, which was manned by the 2nd battalion of the I.R Scharfenstein. A minor spoiler: the cavalry pictured here eventually won the day for the Emperor Leopold.

Playtest for Prinz Eugen - Mönchröden 1703

 

Imperial Forces

 

GL Graf von Limburg-Styrum

 

Cavalry Bde (Fugger): Cuirassier Regts Gronsfeld and Jung Darmstadt and Aufseß Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Brigade Mercy : Infantry regts of Lothringen and Thürheim (2 bns each)

 

Brigade Bibra: Infantry Regts of Scharfenstein and Baden-Baden (2 bns each)

 

Company of field artillery plus 3 light battalion guns

 

 

Bavarian Forces

 

Elector Maximilien of Bavaria

 

Cavalry Bde (Arco): Cuirassier Regt Arco and Monasterol Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Cavalry Bde (Wolframsdorf): Leibgarde Regt and Santini Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Brigade Lützelburg: Infantry regts: Leibregiment and Bettendorf  (2 bns each), Lützelburg and Boismorel Grenadiers (1 bn each)

 

Brigade Maffei: Infantry regts: Haxthausen, Spilberg, Octfort, Tattenbach, Leib Grenadieren, Maffei (1 bn each)

 

2 Companies of field artillery

 

Status: All field artillery units 2; Bavarian Leib Grenadieren and Leibgarde zu Pferd 4; all else 3

The Bavarian infantry got themselves all sorted out into line, safely out of range, and started to advance on the Imperial position. The Boismorel "Red Grenadiers" in evidence - first time out - surely things were bound to go well for them?....

Over to their right, near the village of Sankt Johann am Röden, more infantry are busy countermarching, under the watchful eye of the Elector and his staff. The leading column has just come under fire from the Austrian battery opposite, of which more later.

 

View along the Austrian line, from their left. Fugger's cavalry getting organised on this flank.

 

And here comes the Bavarian infantry attack - the bad news is that it was directed at some earthworks which the Austrians had dug the night before, but it was a playtest, after all, and everyone was keen to see what happened.

 

General Maffei (yellow coat) is devastated to watch the I.R D'Octfort rapidly accumulating hits from the artillery opposite, especially with the Elector looking on.

Back to the left flank - here goes! - in goes the charge - head first into the earthworks...

 

Oo-yah! That didn't go awfully well - both units repulsed and shaken.

 

 

Meanwhile, on the other flank, not much is happening, but attention must be drawn to the Austrian battery on the ridge, marked with an ivory counter. This unit performed absolute miracles with the firing dice - all at long range, they quickly eliminated one infantry unit and an enemy battery. It was quite late in the game before this battery missed a shot. If this sounds like a severe glitch in the rules, let me reassure you that the Bavarian artillery, on the other hand, never hit anything all day. Chance does even out a bit over time, but sometimes the balance is not shared fairly by the two sides!

Things pretty quiet still at St Johann - the troops there not keen to venture out to face the artillery fire?

1/Bettendorf still not happy at all following their experience at the earthworks - they refused to rally, and eventually were swept away by the Imperial horse at  the end of the day.

 

The Elector and his staff admire his troops at St Johann - note the grenadiers in the background, performing warm-up exercises for throwing grenades.

 

On the other side of the village, GM Wolframsdorf has his cavalry brigade all ready, waiting for orders. Household cavalry [Status 4!] in blue, Santini Dragoons in red.

  

Somewhere across the valley, the Imperial C-in-C stand is present, smelling of fresh varnish. FM Styrum definitely displeased that the expected Imperial flag did not arrive in time - I've promised that I'll post a photo when the flag is done. It's only a small flag, for goodness sake.

 

Back at the earthworks, the Bavarian horse has sneaked around the end - General Arco with his own regiment of cuirassiers about to eliminate some of the Emperor's boys from Lorraine. Yes - they should have designed the earthwork with end-bits, shouldn't they? [note technical terminology - I've been reading Chris Duffy again] 

And Arco's brigade subsequently continued their attack on the Austrian right flank - the cuirassiers are on the right, Monasterol's Dragoons on the left - the cuirassiers did rather better in their melee. This is significant since it gives further evidence that dragoons are probably best when not used in this role, and also serves notice that these cuirassiers did very well, with a string of successes, taking the VP count from a 4-1 deficit to 5-5 [very nearly winning the day all on their own] and will be the chief argument for a major revision of the melee rules subsequently, so it is to be hoped that they enjoyed the experience.

Still at it - the Arco boys continue on their merry way - here they are at this end of the picture, about to take out a battalion of the Thürheim regiment from the flank.

 

But Fugger, with the Jung-Darmstadt cuirassiers, mopped up enough damaged infantry units to win the day for the Emperor. His late bid for man-of-the match failed because he was overshadowed by the Holy Roman Artillery mentioned earlier.

 

Some of the Elector's reserve troops, disappointed not to have figured more prominently, are left with nothing to do. The Empire has won 6-5...

 

...as you see.

General view from behind the Austrian left, at the end of the game. Not much happened on this flank, but the Sacred Battery is still in position (practising misses at this stage), and Fugger's horse have cleared the area in front of the ridge, at the far end of the table.

Goya has promised (no - too strong - has offered) to send his thoughts on the rules. There were definite clunkinesses in a couple of areas. The game was still OK, in fact, but there were times when I was distracted, thinking what a nice, smooth, logical game Commands & Colors is. I'm sure it will be fine - I'm not really discouraged, but  there is a fair amount of sorting out to do. I'll put a rules discussion in a subsequent post.

If I don't get that published before Christmas, I hope everyone has a relaxing time. All good wishes!

WSS: Playtest Set-Up

 Tomorrow, technology and health permitting, I hope to try another playtest with my homebrewed WSS rules. These have been modified since the last playtest session, so we'll see what's what. I'm working to try to get a C-in-C stand completed in time for the Imperialist force - they may have to take the field without a flag. They won't mind - reduces the risk of getting it captured.

 

Initial position - Austrians (on the left) in a prepared position near Mönchröden.

 

 

Neither they nor the opposition will get the advantage of platoon firing, but the Austrians do have some battalion guns - just saying.

 

 

View from the other end of the table - the Elector of Bavaria's troops (on our left) emerge from the woods to find the Imperial forces waiting for them. Hmmm.

 

 

 

WSS: Quick, Snappy Parade

You want it good, or you want it Thursday?

[Nelson Riddle]

 

I was sorting out some flags and putting the finished boys in a better order in the boxes. Since I am now about a year into this project, I thought some commemorative photos would be appropriate. Time is a bit short this morning, since I have to go to get my car fixed, so there will some grumbling in the ranks about order of precedence and all that, but here are my Austrian and Bavarian armies for circa 1703, in their current state.

The Austrians - they are due to get a proper command stand for the C-in-C, and there are two battalions in mid-refurb, otherwise we are just about there.

The Bavarians - nothing in the to-do list for these chaps, so I guess they are done for Phase 1

Next up? - well I'm keen to get some siege and fortress artillery done, so they can join in with Vauban's Wars, and (to be strictly honest) the Austrians and Bavarians could each use an extra regiment of horse, and after that I have a lot of French and British troops to sort out. Team photos are reassuring - it reminds me that a lot has been done! Many thanks to Goya for help with infantry painting.

No social distancing in 1703.

WSS - Regiment Scharfenstein

More Imperialist infantry - this was supposed to be the last refurbishing batch for Phase One, but in fact I decided to hold back and strip two of the battalions, since they weren't in a good enough state to retouch. This last batch comprises the fuzzy end of the collection - these figures had not been varnished, and appear to have been stored less successfully than most of their colleagues. Whatever, they are more weathered, more battered than I have attempted so far in this project.

These fellows took a fair amount of labour to get into shape - I'm happy with them now, though a regiment dressed in grey with black facings is a bit on the sombre side.

These are two battalions of the regiment of Sebastian Carl, Graf Kratz von Scharfenstein. The Regiment Haßlinger will be along in a week or two, once they have been stripped and had the castings cleaned up a little.

Getting there!

WSS - More Imperial Foot

The painting is still coming along nicely. As promised two weeks ago, the next hefty batch is refurbished and finished - flags apart. Another four battalions of Austrians.

As this job continues, I'm starting to get to the rather more battered parts of the hoard (horde?), so the clean-up work becomes more substantial, and in this case I had to supply about 15% of new figures, painted from scratch. To avoid any culture shock, or obvious silliness in the line-up, I have started painting the new figures in a style which is unfamiliar to me, with black outlining, to match the originals. This is slow going, but I have enjoyed the challenge, the results are quite pleasing, and it is a good exercise for me to have to produce finished soldiers painted "in the style of" the previous owner. Certainly the new boys fit in well enough with the refurbed old ones for me to have to look carefully to tell them apart.

There you go, you see - forging antiques; my teachers said I would come to no good.

Two battalions each for the regiments of Thürheim (left) and Gschwind. Not a flag in sight, of course, but that should be sorted out in the next few weeks

Next batch of Imperialists will be another of the same size, 72 figures, and that will be Phase One finished, apart from general officers. Lots of flags to do now - the new arrivals have to wait in a lengthening queue for their flags, but I'm coming around to that. Something should happen there soon.

You can see the large command bases in the centre of each unit, with the mini-dice frame at the rear. The research team here at Chateau Foy came up with a design which would make a column 150mm long or a line 150mm wide. No reason, really, just OCD at work.

Immediate plans for what happens after Phase One are to add two battalions of grenadiers to the Bavarians, two more battalions of Austrians (blue - Baden-Baden - for a bit of variety) and a small batch of foot dragoons for the Austrians.

I'm trying to keep this painting frenzy organised, so I don't lose all enthusiasm for the task. I'm (roughly) working 6 days on, 3 days off, I limit each session to two hours max and take a lot of trouble over keeping things tidy and putting everything away at the end of a batch. I think the attic area may become rather hot for extended painting sessions as the Summer comes in, but the night shifts are good [no extra pay, though]. Radio 3 on permanently during painting hours - I've sat through more screeching sopranos than usual over the last few days, but generally very calming.

The two-hour shift rule works nicely - I also try to keep my hands off the soldiers during my days off, or else I just get distracted and fiddle about, which, overall, dampens the mojo.

Strange times, so if I can delude myself that I'm staying organised - however petty the context - I find it helps. I am not painting because I have nothing else to do, I'm painting because I choose to do so.

My thanks to Stryker for advice on painting in this style - much appreciated. Keep well, everyone - look after yourselves and each other.

WSS - Things I Need to Find Out - (1) Grenadiers

The sudden arrival here of a collection of miniature soldiers for the WSS at the end of last year was partly because I had always had a (vague) interest in that time-frame for wargames, partly because such a collection had become available and, importantly, because it seemed a relatively easy way into a new period - not exactly buying a new war off the peg, but certainly getting off to a flying start.

Since then I have been busily reading and refurbing and painting - all good fun, but no games yet.

My original plan was to attempt to develop the Bavarian and Austrian armies at equal pace, so that I could start playing with them as early as possible, and develop my rules as I went along. That's what I did, with some success, for the ECW a few years ago. So for the WSS I started off like this, but it soon became obvious that I could make quickest progress if I concentrated on the Bavarians first.

Various reasons, in no particular order:

(1) The miniature Bavarian army, for some reason, was in better shape - less breakages, less paint deterioration, less men AWOL.

(2) The Bavarian army seemed a lot less complicated - less daunting - organisationally and as a painting challenge. Also, the Bavarian troops I had bought in represented just about the whole of the historical army, so there were no tricky decisions about an OOB. The Imperialist set-up is a lot more tricky, I would have to make some decisions about the OOB, to give some kind of historical context (though in fact my planned OOB has more to do with the facing colours of the existing collection!).

(3) There are some aspects of the Austrian organisation which I haven't yet got a grip on - though I am acquiring some impressive-looking books. I just have to read the beggars now.

(4) The whole subject of WSS flags is a lot more complicated for the Imperial side. This may seem trivial, but for me it isn't.

I've now reached a suitable moment for a bit of a sanity check. I have two big batches remaining of troops to refurb for the Austrians, then my Phase One plan is pretty much complete, if I can get the numbers of staff figures up to scratch. I'm due to start painting again on Thursday, and I'm not sure that painting and thinking at the same time is as easy as it used to be. There is, though, a need for me to do something about grenadiers.

So today's subject is grenadiers. How did the Austrians arrange their grenadiers? How shall I paint and base the grenadier element in my Austrian army? I'll start this by interrupting myself, and returning briefly to describe what I'm doing for the Bavarians.

Bavarian Leibregiment grenadier - plate by Anton Hoffman

Thus far, for the Bavarians, I have arranged a few grenadiers in the right-hand base of each battalion, to indicate that there was a grenadier company present, but they serve no real purpose beyond the important one of looking nice. My games are unlikely to operate at a tactical scale where the grenadier company is detached to do something specific. I still do have the job of painting up two proper grenadier battalions for the Bavarians, though. My understanding is that the Leibregiment had two battalions of fusiliers (which I have painted already), and one of grenadiers (which I haven't) - this grenadier battalion was a designated unit in its own right, wore a slightly different uniform from the fusiliers and had its own flags etc.

OK - good so far. In 1703 or thereabouts, a regiment of (supposedly) French emigrés was to be set up, organised the same as the Leibregiment. According to the autobiography of Jean-Martin de la Colonie (who had expected to be the colonel of this new unit, but eventually was appointed lieutenant colonel), the fusilier battalions were never formed, though the grenadiers certainly were, and can be found on the OOB for Schellenberg - the Boismorel Grenadiers. The inhaber, Monsieur Boismorel himself, was a Frenchman (his name, I think, is a kind of forest mushroom, which is not important at this point, but is the kind of nonsense that interests me), and his personal ambition, according to Colonie, was to stay as far from any warfare as he could. The Boismorel boys have the appeal of offering some variety in the uniforms - dark red, in this case. Some of them wore grenadier caps, some wore tricorns - a welcome bit of colour on the wargames table and - again - they were a distinct, permanent grenadier formation with their own flag.

Righto - so that's what I'm doing for the Bavarians, now, for goodness sake, let's get back to the Austrians.

Austrian Grenadier on the left - image used without permission

There was a grenadier presence in the Austrian bit of the collection I bought in, but I am intending to change it. Based on what I have established so far (which is not very much), the Austrians would group together the grenadiers from the regiments within a brigade, thus the provisional battalions formed would be separate from the fusiliers, but would not have flags, and the facings and so on would be a mixture of the contributing regiments. This is kind of familiar to me, since this is what I have tried to reproduce for my Napoleonic Spanish army of 1809.

So my first question for this new Age of Reason is, did the Austrians organise their grenadiers by brigade, in this way? Am I right in assuming that the battalions thus formed would have no flags of their own, since they were informal groupings? Which leads me on to the practical issue of how I should base such units. My Foot battalions for the WSS are organised as 3 bases of 6 figures - each base is two rows of three men, the centre base holds the command presence - colours, mounted officer, drums - while each flank base includes one officer on foot. The bases can be used to denote the formation, but they do not operate independently, and are not removed for losses.

This is now getting into thinking out loud (or in print), but if I were to combine the grenadiers from two regiments for a brigade, for example, I could have one base of grenadiers painted for each regiment (I could even include a drummer in each such base) - not sure if I need a command base, nor how such a base would be made up, but now we are getting into fiddly detail. I could make a grenadier battalion from just two such bases - I'll have a look at the numbers in the books and see if that would make sense.

At that point I think I've conveyed the nub of the problem. Beyond that I'm going to embarrass myself with my own lack of knowledge! If you have experience of the WSS on the tabletop, I'm keen to learn how you think the Austrians organised their grenadiers, and how you set this up in miniature. All ideas welcome!

If this goes well, my next questions will be about the nippy issue of Austrian flags in 1703!...

WSS - Another Batch of Cavalry

It took me three days (not very intensive days) to paint the remaining cavalry which were still in the current queue. About half that time was needed to refurbish those figures I could lift pretty much straight from Eric's collection (with facing changes and a bit of cleaning up), and about half to paint the missing command figures from scratch.

From front to rear, these are the (Bavarian) Santini Dragoons, the (Bavarian) Leib Garde and the (Imperialist) Aufsess Dragoons. Not a flag in sight, as yet. I have a good image of the flag for the Aufsess boys, courtesy of one of the Bruno Mugnai books, but have come up with nothing at all yet for the Bavarian dragoons - maybe they didn't carry them in the field? Nah - there's men with poles waiting for them, so if I can't get authentic flag images I'll invent my own. I've a lot of flags to do, so I'll have a graphic-design week later on.

The Aufsess unit (grey coats) are actually Franconian, from the Fränkische Kreis - I chose them because I had pre-painted troops in very similar coat colours - no better reason for selection could be imagined! The dismounted dragoon contingent for the Aufsess are now in the queue - I have the figures, I just have to paint them.

The Leib Garde (blue) are actually [heavy] horse; the squadron with the red belts and facings are the Carabiniers, the squadron with black are the Hartschiere.

No excuses left now - the next job must be the first of the remaining big Austrian foot batches - 4 battalions, I think. I'll clear the decks and have a couple of days break before I disappear into that lot.

I had a very pleasant walk on my own yesterday on the farm - during one of the few sunny spells of the day. I walked down to one of the farm's reservoirs - really just a big rainwater sink which they use to pipe water on to the fields. There must be fish in the reservoir - I saw a swan, about half a dozen geese and a few ducks, and a spooky heron took off as soon as I appeared. Strange creatures, herons - they take off like a lorry-load of scaffolding. I also saw and heard the skylarks busy over the farm fields, so I guess they were trying to distract my attention from their nests.

Very therapeutic, anyway.

Keep well, everyone.

Battle of Aspern-Essling (Day 1) - 21 May 1809

Wargaming yesterday - early start to get to Schloss Goya for 10am kick-off. My idea that it would be amusing to arrive with fresh custard tarts was stillborn, since I couldn't obtain any. No matter, in fact, since our host laid on the customary excellent food and refreshments.

View over the battlefield, early on, from behind the Austrian left flank

Our game was the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics official scenario for Day 1 of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, which I guess is just the Battle of Aspern, when Massena attempted to hang on to the town, waiting for the bulk of Napoleon's army to hurry up and cross the Danube; thus the French have IV Corps plus some of the reserve cavalry. Lannes and all that stuff belongs to the second day. One big advantage of Day 1 is that it is small enough to make a good-sized game, though the number of built-up areas promised to give the beta-test Ramekin rules [I'm up to version 1.7] a decent workout and sanity-check.

I was Massena, while Goya and Stryker shared the Austrian forces, their overall commander being Archduke Charles. I took along my own French troops, and the Austrian forces were Goya's. We followed the published scenario very closely - the only (insignificant) amendment was that we replaced the mystery French "Guard Heavy Cavalry" unit with a third Cuirassier regiment - it has been suggested to me that whoever designed the scenario identified the Carabiniers as a guard unit - no matter.

Because we stuck to the published set-up, my artillery was mostly stuck in the wrong places. What I should have done was get busy right away with the double-moves which Ramekin allows, to get my artillery better placed. Didn't happen, of course, because I was immediately up to my neck in muck and bullets as the Kaiserliks set about the village.

The big Austrian line units have a scary amount of firepower, and they performed well - their only disadvantages are that they are slow, and are not allowed double moves, though they can certainly get a shift on when they are retiring, since they get double retreats for the C&CN flag symbol rolls. Their distinctive battaillon-masse tactic also proved to be a major discouragement to my late cavalry attack - without horse artillery (or aerial support) there was not much I could do against them.

The Austrians made excellent use, throughout, of the Combined Arms Attack rule, using artillery (including one particularly effective Grand Battery on the little hill north of the village) very effectively to support infantry attacks on the various bits of the town. I took heavy casualties very quickly, and was steadily pushed out of the town - I hung on to the extreme east end of the place, and I held the church for a while, until, again, the Austrians brought up a foot battery and blew me out of there.

So the French were very quickly well behind on Victory Points, including extra ones for possession of the majority of the town, and I only made the margin of defeat anything like respectable with a grand charge of cavalry (historically authentic, by the way) which took out the pesky Grand Battery and wrecked the Austrian cavalry. With everyone beginning to show signs of fatigue, Bellegarde's troops eventually claimed the necessary 12th VP, and the French were beaten [but only until the following day!].

Yes, it was pretty decisive. Once again, my sincere thanks to my colleagues/opponents for their company and good humour, and to Goya for all his hard work organising and setting up, and for slaving in the galley.

Austrian High Command caught in the act of setting up the Grand Battery on the ridge. On the left edge of the photo is visible Massena [that's me] in a rather snazzy little [S-Range] carriage - yes, that's only correct for Wagram, but the thing would never get a run out at all if it weren't for a little historical licence...

Already some casualties, but the Archduke isn't hanging about here

The French left was protected by the church and some woods, and some impassable marshes. I put some crack light infantry in there - the boys in the church seem to have lit enough candles to hold out for a while, but the fellows in the wood were shot to bits very quickly

Grenzer troops and Jaegers - good shooting...

Discouraged French troops falling back after being routed from the first bit of the town; the strange circular base is my version of one of C&CN's new-fangled "Garrison Counters" which we re-named "Detachments" since it seemed more appropriate. These are a useful little addition to the game, and I might say some more about these some time. Yesterday we used unpainted MDF, with the soldiers attached with BluTack,  but they are to be smartened up a bit. They are a most excellent way of finding a job for some of your substandard figures - give me your battle-worn, your bayonetless, your OOP misfits, your oddments from the Spares Box, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... 

Austrians well-established in Aspern

French cavalry getting moving on the right flank

General Legrand brings up some fresh troops from his division (not easy to find) to try to take back part of the village; they failed, and he himself became a casualty in the attempt

Massena still hasn't moved, but he can see that the village is a lost cause - he gets the cavalry advancing on his right flank (far right of the table)

Looking from the Austrian right, round about the same stage of the battle

D'Espagne mops up the rest of the Grand Battery (half of it has already gone) with the 2nd Cuirassiers. Archduke Charles looks a bit close to the action in the background. Note the impressive row of white VP counters...

But the heavy cavalry had no answer to the battaillon-masse tactics of the Austrian line infantry, so concentrated their attention on the cavalry - this went far better...

As D'Espagne's French cuirassiers attack the mounted Austrians, Marulaz brings up the French light cavalry to attack the uhlans on the hill

Some things can just be relied on - like death and taxes, the 15eme Chasseurs are always around somewhere

The battle is more or less lost, but Molitor attempts to take back part of the village - borrowing the successful Austrian tactic of supporting the infantry with artillery in a Combined Arms attack

Situation at the end - the French cavalry have pulled back to avoid the fire of the Austrian infantry. Massena is running out of friends, but he knows Lannes is coming to sort things out tomorrow!

Special mention - Goya's new Landwehr unit are plastic (gasp) - very nice too - they did well. Goya is reluctant to spend too much on figures for the Landwehr or militia, since he is uneasy about making much of an effort to arm the masses.

***** Late Edit *****

Since the only reaction to this post thus far today has been a couple of emails which indicated that at least two of my readers are confused, I must offer my apologies for a very poor bit of editorial work here. Having thought further about the matter, I confess that I am now a bit confused myself. 

To clarify: this is not a description of the first day of a 2-day wargame (I wish it was!), it is a description of a wargame based on the first day of Aspern-Essling, which was a real battle which lasted two days, and my suggestion here that the French might go on to win after two days is not based on history, it merely expresses the French commander's expectation after wargaming the first day's action. After all, the French would probably not have chosen to fight on if they had expected to lose, I guess.

Which brings me to the second point. Was Essling actually a French defeat? I have always believed it to be so - famously so, in fact. Yet Prof De Vries points out (correctly) that Essling was a battle-honour on French Napoleonic battle flags - the 1812 issue of flags showed this honour for a great many regiments. The Professor reckons that the French (like everyone else, he says) only awarded battle honours for victories - the later example of La Moskowa (Borodino) being explained since the French regard it as a victory. Thus, says he, Essling must be another disputed result.

I confess I have always been sort of aware of this apparent paradox, but had managed to avoid thinking it through. I did a quick bit of reading today, and it seems that battle honours were awarded to regiments which performed well at battles commanded by Napoleon himself (which is why you will not find Tarragona, for example). The small matter of whether or not he won was not normally an issue, as we know.

All fine - looks like I learned something I should already have known, and if it turns out that the Professor is mistaken (an event rarer than a Napoleonic defeat) then that is indeed icing on the cake.

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