Monkey Trap - Campaign Battle of Abbach

 The Situation

With Strik's column, after many days behind enemy lines, almost in sight of the safety of Regensburg, the French swooped in and cut the road ahead of them.  General Buxhöwden, aware of their plight, agonised over the safety of the city, but concluded that it could be held against stray French probes by a rearguard while he led the bulk of the army out to Strik's rescue.  Grand Duke Constantine led the column, clearing the road as far as the town of Abbach of what turned out to be no more than French scouts.  Having been swept away the scouts did not, therefore, see that Constantine was followed by a much stronger column led by Buxhöwden himself and von Anrep.  Having ensured that the road was free the rescue column counter-marched, on the morning of November 20 heading over the hills back to Regensburg, again with the Guard leading.

Suchet's division, south of Regensburg, had been given an imperial mission - to complete the destruction of Strik's column by cutting it off, along with the Imperial Guard who had come to its rescue, and pinning it against the Danube until the full weight of the French army could be brought to bear to crush it.  To that end, his division had cut the riverside road between Regensburg and the isolated Russians on the evening of the 19th, and the following morning were marching south along the road toward Abbach. 

The Battle

North of Abbach there is a low ridge running down to a loop of the Danube, and the road runs across a saddle of this ridge.  Just as the head of Suchet's column was crossing the Iradinger Bach at 9:00am, south of the village of Gebraching, they saw troops in battle order cresting the ridge before them - the Russian Imperial Guard.  Its heavy artillery was just unlimbering on the road itself, while the Chevalier Guard dressed its ranks to the artillery's right and the Preobazhenski regiment of grenadiers to their left.

Meanwhile, as part of the same encirclement plan, two divisions of Davout's III Corps were closing in from the east, one on either bank of the Abbacher Mühlbach, which flows from the east into the Danube by the town of Abbach.

Behind Constantine, Strik's bedraggled column was lined up along the riverside road, waiting for the road to be clear for their dash to the safety of Regensburg.  What the French did not know was that von Anrep's powerful division had also been part of the mission to rescue Strik.  It also was lined up to march behind the Guard, with the column extending more than a mile from the riverside road down past the town of Teugn.

The French lost no time in responding to the Russian advance.  Suchet's men crossed the stream, angling left to present a dense body to the Russian right, Marshal Soult and the Emperor himself in close attendance.  Davout's divisions advanced down the line of the Mühlbach, Bisson on the right bank, Gudin on the left, toward the town.  Davout handled his men with his customary skill.  Seeing the backs of the Russian Guard cavalry atop the ridge to his right, he diverted Bisson's division to the attack.

Alas, the thick weather that had been such a friend to the French at Attenkirchen now betrayed them.  It closed in at 10:00am, gusts of drizzle obscuring the field.  Bisson's division groped their way up the slope, but no longer confident that their target was even still to their front.

Marechal Bernadotte arrived on the south-western corner of the field in the late morning.  He was torn - the emperor had sent him a letter at first light urging him with great force to attack at once with all the men at his disposal, but he did not relish the prospect of throwing Kellerman alone at Anrep's eleven thousand men, vulnerable in march order though they were.  Unless he could succeed in defeating an enemy more than three times his strength at a blow, he could see that the reprisal would be fierce.  He sent a hasty dispatch to Napoleon expressing his reservations, but received only a repetition of the previous order: En avant!  Toute de suite!

As it turned out he was saved by the same fog that was impeding Bisson's attack.  With no enemy visible through the rainy gusts, Kellerman too could creep forward under its cover rather than impetuously charge an enemy.

Bad blurring in this photo - sorry.  The Russian Guard is lined up along the ridge, with Suchet leaning on them from the north and Bisson from the south.
Meanwhile, Gudin advances in the centre straight toward the town.

The arrival of two more divisions to support Kellerman put further pressure on the Russians.  Kutuzov saw the need to hold off Gudin's advance down the Mühlbach long enough to allow the divisions in the south (Anrep and Strik) to clear Abbach.  Anrep's infantry crowded into Abbach, striving to create a large enough perimeter to let Strik in, while the Guard grenadiers created an escape route to the north.  His  cavalry was deployed east of the town - two thousand horsemen to face down the advancing division.  

Meanwhile the Guard, on the northern ridge, scrambled to escape the trap that was swiftly closing on them - Suchet's division from the north and Bisson's from the south threatened to crush them between hammer and anvil.  They almost succeeded.  At 11:00am the French attacked, storming up both slopes to catch the Guard cavalry unsupported.  The Chevalier Guard and the Lifeguard Hussars were both swept away, taking no further part in the day's action, and the two divisions re-formed on a broad front to sweep west to the river bank and then south to the town, completing the Russians' encirclement.  

They were not unopposed, though.  The Preobazhenski grenadiers lined the western end of the ridge, with sixteen guns to their front, to delay the onslaught.  Delay was all they could achieve, though - one brigade, however good they might be, cannot stop two oncoming divisions, and by 1:00pm the grenadiers had been driven back to the outskirts of the town and the guns overrun.

The circle begins to close.  Looking west toward the Danube, with Regensburg over your right shoulder, the French are closing in from the east and the north
- the units marked with red fatigue dice are the remaining Russian Imperial Guards, and the column coming along the river-bank in the south-west is Strik,
for whose sake the battle is being fought.  Gudin, Bisson and Suchet are shaking themselves into a contuous line cutting the Russians off from Regensburg.

Despite this success Suchet could not feel entirely secure, for even as his attack went in against the Guard a fresh Russian division appeared in his rear, near Gebraching - Langeron's column, marching down from Regensburg with the mission of breaking the encirclement of the main army.  The Emperor was untroubled, though, for he knew that French reinforcements were due shortly from the same quarter - a division of Bernadotte's along with his corps artillery reserve.

Rivaud duly arrived on Langeron's tail, but the artillery did not, and Langeron, not accepting the status of victim, turned to face Rivaud and maul him before resuming his own mission.  The tables turned as Rivaud found himself suddenly surrounded, for the Russian Artillery Reserve now appeared on the Regensburg road to support Langeron.  By time the French artillery did enter the field it was too late - Rivaud had been crushed, and the French artillery served only as an extra sacrifice.

It had not been entirely in vain, though.  The work of destroying Rivaud cost Langeron hours, and the delay meant that the army in the town would be on their own - they would get no help from him in breaking out.  Given that, it was all they could do to maintain their hold on the town itself.  Constantine called for help from Major-General Anrep, coming up from the south.  He deployed his heavy artillery to block the streets at the northern end of the town, and the gaps between the houses.  From every window bristled Preobrezhensky musket barrels and bayonets.  

The first assault by Suchet's men was driven back with heavy losses.  The second assault, led by Marshal Soult personally, drove the Guards back from the first lines of houses, but they returned an hour later before the French could consolidate their gains.  The grenadiers were tiring, though, and the Church of the Ascension of Mary, just behind their front line, was filling with their wounded.  A third assault was ordered at 4:00pm by Soult, and as it went in a stray shot from a Russian 12-pdr in the main street killed him instantly.  The assault faltered, and Suchet's men retired several hundred yards, giving the Guards a well-earned reprieve after hours of hard house-to-house fighting.

Meanwhle in the south, French cavalry and horse-artillery slipped in and out of the misty drizzle along the river-bank, but Strik's guns held them at a respectful distance for some time.  Anrep's infantry moved up to the town, then the three brigades formed a line to the east, and faced hours of relentless work holding off the assaults of Gudin and Bisson's divisions from cutting the road.  Strik's column replaced them in the south, wheeling right onto the road to Teugn and facing Vandamme's and Drouet's oncoming divisions.  His place on the riverside road was taken, in turn, by Anrep's cavalry.  

In mid-afternoon, though, the weather, after drizzling and raining all morning, cleared up, giving the French cavalry in the south a clear view of the enemy.  The supporting horse guns were driven away again by Strik's artillery, but Kellerman saw his chance at last.  At 4:00pm he ordered his division - two thousand hussars backed by a regiment of chasseurs - to clear the road of the Russian dragoons blocking it.  They did so heroically.  The Finland Dragoons were swept aside by a torrent of horsemen, and before the Grodno Hussars in the supporting line could react they had been overwhelmed also.  Kellerman's horsemen pressed on down the road to Abbach, which was now clear.  Strik was too busy trying to hold off two French divisions to interfere with their progress.  Seeing the horsemen approaching, General Buxhöwden hastily pulled a brigade of infantry out of the perimeter line to block their path, but weakened as they were they, too, were ridden down by the exultant Frenchmen.  Buxhöwden himself, directing the defence, was overthrown, sabred and trampled before the hussars were driven off.  Greviously wounded, he was carried to the Church of the Ascension as the light faded.  

The Russian line collapsing toward the end of the afternoon, while French cavalry approach just out-of-shot to the right.

Looking now from the east, the French hussars can been seen hitting the town's edge along the riverside road,
having ridden throuth the defending infantry and General Buxhöwden behind them.

Under cover of darkness, Buxhöwden was loaded onto an artillery caisson with muffled wheels as a makeshift ambulance.  As the night mists re-gathered, the survivors slipped away up the riverside road to rejoin Langeron.  Hardly pausing as they passed through Regensburg, they marched straight on, north to Bohemia.  The last to pass through the town the following morning were a company of engineers, charged with disabling the bridge as best they could to discourage French pursuit.