Austerlitz and Campaign Wrapup (It Is All Over)

The final battles of the campaign were fought a few months ago (the Austrian one in April and the Russians in May), and we planned to have a final celebratory meeting in July.  Well, I was hijacked by realtity and that didn't happen (also why there have been no posts on this blog since June), but we finally managed a re-schedule in October at our old haunt of the Bundanoon Hotel, whose hospitality we gratefully acknowledge in the hope that they will have us back.

On the Saturday a splendid dinner was preceeded by a debrief of the whole campaign, with maps showing the information available to both sides and discussion in retrospect of plans, intentions and surprises.  Recriminations were few and good-humoured, and there was more than one surprising revelation.  But what goes on in Bundanoon stays in Bundanoon.  You had to be there.

One thing I should announce here is that having added up victory points for the campaign it came as no surprise to anybody that the French alliance, having won 90% of the battles, won on points, although John would be quick to point out that they never came close to taking Vienna, nor did they destroy either Coalition army, so in reality the war would resume in the spring and with Prussian help end in the restoration of the French monarchy.  

That is as may be, but within the campaign victory objectives, the French won.  But wait.  The scenario also specified that within the winning side there would be an individual winning nation.  Gordon, leading Bavaria, had played a canny diplomatic game early on, extracting concessions from (in the end) the French in exchange for his help.  That help proved invaluable - not only an addtional thirty thousand men, but secure supply lines in most of the theatre of operations and intelligence of enemy movements - vital to the campaign-within-the-campaign against the Russians, driving them back through the Bohemian Forest to Pilsen.  The upshot of all this is that between French subsidies, diplomatic bonuses and battlefield performance, Gordon as Bavaria was declared the overall winning player.  Congratulations, mate!

On the Sunday we fought, for the first time in a while, an historical scenario - Austerlitz, of course.  In the campaign the Austrian and Russian armies never did manage to unite, but historically the only battle in the whole campaign worthy of the name saw them fighting side by side in eastern Moravia, to their ultimate destruction.  The loss of Austerlitz knocked the Austrians out of the war for four years, and left the Russians to form a new coalition with the Prussians - that one would come to a humiliating end at Friedland, eighteen months later.

As a battle scenario Austerlitz is interesting.  Historically an overwhelming victory for Napoleon, it was by no means a foregone conclusion any more than the campaign itself was.  In both, the Coalition outnumbered the French, and it took all of Napoleon's skills as well as the superb state of his instrument, the Grande Armée, to achieve victory.  Both armies at the battle are at the end of their tether, the Coalition discouraged after months of retreats and minor but costly losses, and the French at the end of a very long and fragile supply line, as well as tired after the same long months of marching and fighting.  

Our players from the campaign switched places to an extent for the battle.  David and Michael, who had formed such a formidable French team, played the Coalition.  Robert, who had played the Austrians, returned to lead his beloved French.  Angus was unable to stay for the battle, and John, alas, was recovering from a medical procedure, so Gordon stood with Robert on the side of the French (this time as an actual Frenchman rather than an ally).

This game was also the first outing for my new terrain system - still 300mm square tiles, but now painted felt over foam, with resin water, rather than artists' mattboard.  Upgraded woods still to come...

The battlefield, looking north.  Sokolnitz and Telnitz villages lower left, Pratzen at the top

Looking up the Littawa, with the village of Sutschen in the foreground, and Aujest behind.

The battle opens at dawn on 2 December.  The Coalition forces are arrayed along the ridge that runs north to south along the battlefield, with the little village of Pratzen nestled just under its brow.   To east and west of the ridge run sluggish, marshy and half-frozen streams - to the west the Goldbach (or Bzizkerbach) and to the east the river Littawa.  Both are crossable, but do form an obstacle to movement and a potential line of defence.  The heights themselves are not particularly commanding, but are high enough to raise the troops on them above the mist that lingers in the valleys, concealning the French massed to the west.  The scenario permitted Coalition troops not on the heights some hidden deployment also, but Michael and David disdained this device, deploying their men in full itimidating view.

The French were more cunning, taking full advantage of the concealing mist to deploy their entire army (including a substantial number of decoys) as divisional blanks.   These began to advance at 8:00 up the slope toward the Russian right, at the northern end of the Pratzen heights. 

Is that a huge assault coming from the French left?  Or a huge bluff?

It was unfortunate for them that the fog burned off while they were only half-way up the hill, allowing the Russians to launch a spoiling charge after an opening cannonade from the artillery of both armies.  

The Coalition Cavalry Reserve, as well as the Imperial Guard, had been deployed well forward, and while the Russian Guard grenadiers and horsemen of the Chevalier Guard pushed against the French that had got over the saddle onto the eastern slope, four thousand cuirassiers charged down the western slope, supported by artillery and light infantry... and bounced.

Four brigades of heavy cavalry retired back up the slope, battered, dismayed, and blown.  Still exposed in front of their supporting infantry on the top of the ridge to French counter-attacks, they left their supporting artillery more exposed still, half-way down the slope and within a few hundred yards of the advancing French.

They lost no time in taking advantage of this disarray.  Seizing the initiative in turn three, French cavalry was flung up the hill at the exposed front line.  Scalfort's brigade of dragoons did heroic work, catching the covering jägers in the flank and pushing on to over-run no less than three artillery brigades.  Coalition morale began to falter, both formally (permanent fatigue markers added to the survivors of Essen's and Hohenlohe's divisions) and informally (Michael, commanding the Coalition right, could see disaster looming, with much of his artillery over-run and his heavy cavalry still exposed to imminent destruction).

The Coalition cavalry (with three ponts of fatigue each) has been pushed back up the hill behind their supporting troops.  The front Russian line is about to be swept away by French artillery and dragoons.

Meantime, on the southern end of the field, David was having a quiet time.  With a couple of Buxhöwden's divions (those of Dokhturov and Przybyczewsky) he occupied the village of Tellnitz, on the east side of the Goldbach, and tentatively probed across the stream to the west.  It was public knowledge that Maréchal Davout was somewhere down there, off-table, and would need to be dealt with when he arrived.  Until he did there seemed to be no urgent need to tangle with St. Hilaire's division of Soult's IV Corps across the stream before Maxdorf.  The imposing array of guns deployed along the forward slope south of Pratzen, in turn, discouraged Soult from attempting anything more adventurous than pinning the Russians facing him.  With nothing better to do, the Russian guns pounded the village and castle of Sokolnitz to deny its cover to the French, turning it by mid-morning into an unihabitable inferno.

At the tail end of the morning the battle's centre of gravity shifted south.  Davout arrived with his two divisions, driving vigorously against the southern end of the Russian line but failing to shift them - the two divisions stationed there contain some of the strongest brigades in the Coalition army.  St. Hilaire's division moved forward in support, crossing the stream near the blazing Sokolnitz to distract Dokhturov's attention away from Davout.  

Davout est arrivé!

At the same time Gordon, as Soult, ordered Vandamme and Legrand across the stream in the centre, swarming up the slope to sieze the village of Pratzen.  

French Generals ordering an attack across the valley against Pratzen in the centre.

This would have applied pressure all along the Coalition line, except that the French attack in the north had stalled.  Bernadotte's uncooperativeness meant that a properly co-ordinated attack could only be made with very low priority, and every piecemeal advance that was attempted had some units knocked back by Russian guns.  Not confident of taking the heights without all his troops committed, Robert fell back half a mile to the Olmütz road, giving the Coalition time and leisure to withdraw their right flank to rest almost on the Littawa by Krzenowitz and to pull back and rest the heavy cavalry, ready for another go in the afternoon.

French troops lining the Olmütz road, having a staring competition with the Russians and Austrians.

With the right secure in the face of the French hesitation, Austrian Feldmarschall-Leutnant Graf von Kollowrath was able to go on the offensive in the centre.  Ordering his infantry brigades down the hill, supported by artillery fire to clear away French supporting troops, he swept Legrand's men out of Pratzen and back across the Goldbach.  French guns were captured and the village occupied.  With that strongpoint in Austrian hands, and covered by Austrian and Russian guns on the heights above, the prospect of further French success in the centre looked dim.

A last push was made in the south by Davout.  The Russian infantry were standig firm around Tellnitz, but their extreme left was covered by two brigades of Austian light cavalry (Stutterheim and Nostitz).  Laplanche's French dragoons led a charge against them, supported by Sahuc, splashing through the swampy frozen shallows of the Littawa, and horse artilllery interspersed.  Both Austrian brigades were driven back with heavy casualties, but the dragoons could not quite finish the job, ending well behind the Russian line, but exhausted and facing enemies on two sides, with the Littawa behind them.

At this point it was clear that the French were not going to be able to force the heights by dark, let alone cause a cascade of collapse in the Coalition forces.  At the same time, their casualties had been relatively light compared with those suffered by the Coalition during the initial morning attack, so the Coalition did not feel up to the job of sweeping the Emperor from the field.  According to campaign rules this would have been a marginal French victory, based on casualties short of either army breaking, but this was not a campaign battle.  According to the scenario victory conditions it was a draw, but Napoleon really needed the smashing victory he achieved in real life, and on this occasion he did not get it.