Campaign Battle of Küstrin

This is a hasty re-publication of an AAR sent as an e-mail to campaign participants.  

The context, for those not in the campaign (and I must bring the overall campaign history up to date here) is that it is March 1807.  Most of the action is in Lusatia and Silesia, with French columns also penetrating deep into Poland.  Davout's III Corps has marched from Berlin to take the city of Küstrin on the Oder to support an advance along the Baltic coast.  He knew there were some Prussian forces lurking to the north, but was a little surprised when they offered battle.

The French found themselves in a tricky position, with Davout and his strongest division in the town (having marched in the previous evening), but the other two divisions and the artillery still cooking breakfast on the other side of the river when  the dawn revealed Prussians approaching from the north, emerging from the concealing woods a mile away, and more apparently coming from the north-east.  Orders were immediately sent to Morand to get his division across the Oder, which he did.

Küstrin from the east at dawn.  Both gates are guarded, with a reserve behind able to support either.  Morand's division is approaching the bridge through the "Long suburb" on the west bank of the Oder.  The "Short Suburb", east of the town, is not depicted, although the villages of Warnicke and Drewitz are just visible at bottom and right respectively.  The approaching Prussians are just out of shot past Drewitz.

Before Morand could reach the town, though, he was set upon by the leading Prussian division (the Brieg reserve).  GdB d'Honnières was first off the bridge, and he had time to deploy his five battalions from march column into battle order, but faced by a dozen guns, seven infantry battalions and seven squadrons of heavy cavalry they were seriously outmatched, even with the support of deBilly's light infantry coming up behind.  The brigade broke, but deBilly's line held, falling back in fairly good order (one fatigue point taken) to the river bank.

All the same, the division chose to withdraw to the long suburb, deploying their artillery to the river bank to cover the eastern end of the bridge and the northern wall of the town, and clearing the road to allow Gudin's division to march through.

Meanwhile more Prussians were pouring in from the east.  von Prittwitz's hussars had already raced ahead to help stop Morand's march across the bridge, and now the rest of his column joined the Brieg division in guarding the river crossing, for the time being ignoring the town.

Prussian Cuirassiers thoroughly blown, but one of Morand's brigades hurt and one gone, and the bridgehead dominated by Prussians.

That was not to last, though.  Over the next three hours the two additional Prussian divisions from the east formed up to threaten an assault on the town, and yet another division marched down from the north as far as Drewitz.

View from the north, with the village of Drewitz.

It took no part in the attack on the north gate, though, that started at 10:00am.  The Küstrin Reserve division, having mustered at this city three months earlier, took the lead, supported by the Breslau division.  The gate was taken, and by 11:00 Prussian troops were (barely) inside the town.

The first assault goes in against the city gate after three hours' preparation

Meanwhile the French reserve artillery had come up.  Joining the guns already on the riverbank it engaged in counter-battery fire against the Prussian artillery threatening the bridge.  With half of them temporarily silenced, Gudin's division made a run for it, and managed to get two brigades (not without casualties from the remaining enemy artillery) up to the town, adjacent to the river and with their backs to the wall. Alas, that left them vulnerable to a flank attack by Prussian cuirassiers coming from the NE corner of the town.  Petit's brigade was driven into the river, but Gaultier (who historically accepted the surrender of Küstrin in November '06) was able to slip into the town itself via postern gates.  The bulk of the town assault force, meanwhile, turned its attention to the East gate, and by midday had forced entry there also.

With  Gaultier's brigade having joined Friant's men in the town there seemed no prospect of reinforcing it further, given Prussian command of the bridge approaches.  Despite still having more infantry in the town than the Prussians the French position was delicate, for they had been pushed back to the western part of the town, and they were running out of room to retreat.  Furthermore, the number of losses was mounting dangerously close to the corps' break point.  With another five turns required to keep the Prussians from pushing the French out of the town, Davout could not afford to remain on the back foot.

One of his special traits in this battle, though, is the tendency to lead from the front, allowing attached brigades to ignore all fatigue - a valuable trait in a heroic defence!  So far he had hung back, not using this trait, but now the decision was made to push forward through the city - not necessarily to push the Prussians out altogether, but to gain some space.  The attack was successful, driving a Prussian brigade back to the north gate with fatigue and gaining ground back to the centre of town.  But catastrophe struck!  Even in a victorious combat there is some danger to an attached general, especially one leading the attack with drawn sword.  With two "6"s rolled in a row, Marshal Davout took a musket ball to the head in the moment of victory, and with that it was all over by 1:00pm.  The brigades actually in the town surrender to the Prussians and are permanently lost.  The others may retreat, but the corps is shattered as a fighting force.

The final position, with Prussians closing on the riverbank to seal off the French in the town from any escape.

Afterword

I know that the French were somewhat dismayed, on seeing the scenario, at a discrepancy in the representation of roads.  The operational map, which like all maps is somewhat abstracted for the purpose intended, shows that that road from the west runs across the river by a bridge into the town.  This is only approximately true.

A contemporary map (a military survey published in 1813 by the Geographisches Institut Weimar) shows that the bridge runs to the north of the town, and it is not clear that there even is a good road from there to the city gate.  I represented the city on the tabletop as having gates to the north, with a good connection to the bridge and the east but critically, no gate to the west giving straight onto the bridge.

That was shown on the battle scenario map, but was not obvious from the operational map, which I have now amended:

It may be worth amending further.  Küstrin is often described as a fortress, and I hesitated over how to depict it.  It was heavily fortified in the sixteenth century, and was still so in 1700.  The 1813 map tipped me over the line to depicting it only as a walled city, but I see that the Reymann map of 1852 (very good, but I use it only as a backup source, for by this date the intrusion of railways makes for all sorts of changes in the landscape) shows it still very clearly as a fortress at that date (with artillery and a garrison still in place?  Unclear, but the works themselves are still present).  The bridge is still to the north of the main part of the city, but emerges in a major fortified outerwork, with covered access to the main town.

Had it been depicted as a fortress in the campaign (and I am now convinced that it should have been), Davout would not have been able to just walk in at all, and the battle details would be moot.

Leaving the fortress status aside, would depicting the bridge on the operational map as not going straight into the town have  affected the French decision to accept battle?  I wonder.  Ah, well.  Blame Davout - he is no longer around to argue the point.