1809 Project in 15/18mm: Battle of Eckmuhl Part One - Historical and Wargame Background

 As outlined in a brief post about a month ago we staged a three day wargame refight of the Battle of Eckmuhl in mid September at my den in the UK Cotswolds and I'm now getting round to reporting on it properly. This post covers the historical and wargame background, and next time, how I went about making the terrain. 

CG with two of the 1809 core team - Paul B and Steve Johnson, seen near the start of our Eckmuhl refight

Wargame Background

Regular readers will know that my resurgence of interest in 1809 started about 3 years ago when I got a touch of collecting megalomania and bought a lot of ready painted miniatures from Ebay in earnest so that I could start testing rules and get cracking before I get too old. I took Keith Flint's excellent 18th Century Honours of War system and spiced it up a little, better to reflect the greater flexibility in Napoleonic organisation and tactics and leadership qualities. We did a big test game once per year - fictitious in 2022; Hausen-Teugen-Dünzling in 2023; Abensberg in 2024, and by the latter we'd arrived at a fairly settled set of rules - just as well really as I had already called them "Abensberg to Wagram" (A2W).  Having used them successfully for Eckmuhl I've got the confidence now to post them for readers to see, and use if they care to, in my Napoleonic Download section in the right hand sidebar or here.

(Please note they are not a completely self contained set of rules as I expect anyone seriously interested in trying them will be familiar with the basics of Honours of War, or be willing to buy the Osprey rule book. There are ideas in there though worthy of a look whatever rules you like.)

Serious thinking about Eckmuhl started in early Spring this year but I had not found time to blog about wrapping up Abensberg (October 24) so in brief here goes:

Finishing off Abensberg

Historically Abensberg was a sprawling battle which ended in something of a rout for the Austrians due to a major flank attack on Hiller's army by Lannes' makeshift, but excellent Corps. Fighting in the southern half of the battlefield did not get going till afternoon and then just became a running fight. In our refight Paul B, Martin Gane and Steve Johnson put up a good resistance and made enough time for Archduke Louis to rally much of his Corps and unite with the Reserve Grenadiers to defend a portion of the southern battlefield, while Lannes chased off Hiller's own troops towards Landshut. I was keen to see what could happen in the South and two old friends who had been unable to attend the main weekend, Graham Ward  and Richard Newcombe, were keen to help me in October 2024. We used just the 8 x 6 table  and Richard had Marshal Bessieres commanding a small corps made up of  the Wurttemburg contingent of VIII Corps and Deroy's 3rd Bavarian Division plus a brigade of French Cuirassiers later on. Under fairly sluggish commanders I gave Graham a good sized force of rallied and retreated Light and Line troops from Archduke Louis's Corps and the Grenadier contingent  from II Reserve Corps with artillery and cavalry too. Graham opted not to defend the whole area but kept some dummy markers cleverly concealed in his right flank woods and villages in an effort to gain time. Time proved not to be on Richard's side as he had a sequence of poor command Initiative rolls for the Wurttemburgers , causing them to fail to make ground and steadily suffer from Austrian artillery and skirmisher fire. By the time Deroy's Bavarians had pounded with artillery and closed in Graham still had a consolidated line defending a stream and an open means of retreat.

But for the imbalanced command rolls it would have been a very tight game and I'd recommend this kind of scenario to you to try out - all my briefing documents and orbats are here. 

If you can't get enough photos of Napoleonic miniatures then here is a link to the full set of my Abensberg late afternoon game 

For the casual reader here is a brief taste in pictures

Red lines mark the 8 x 6 area of the original table used for this game. Blue and red dotted lines for the deployment limitations of Allies and Austrians respectively

By about Move 3 Richard had cleared off Graham's dummies and advanced through Kirchdorf.....

........but poor command rolls meant his Wurttemburgers never progressed beyond this position on the right flank

Graham is consolidating in an L shape at the far corner of the table. In the centre Wurttemburg Light Infantry and Bavarians are trying to breach the Austrian line

But Graham has amassed a formidable array of cannon on the high ground and he has a regiment of Lancers just off table  to the left of what we see here.

In the foregound Bavarian cavalry retire having been seen off by the aforementioned Lancers. Bavarian infantry cross the Perkabach but to their right the hard fighting Wurttemburg Jagers retreat to reform.

Overall both sides had fought each other to a standstill but the Allied victory conditions required a more impressive "victory" and Graham had achieved the standoff he required for the Austrian left flank of Hiller's army to retreat in good order and not the historical rout. Thanks to both these stalwart wargaming veterans for giving me the chance to work out this part of our "what if" 1809.

My mind was now clear to think ahead to Eckmuhl.

Hirtorical Background to Eckmuhl
As you will have gathered from the above my approach (and my mates seem to approve) to "refighting"a campaign is to minimise the admin by taking each battle on its own historical merits and then applying logical "what-if" elements to try to make a balanced game, while keeping true to the historical terrain, forces and commanders. So for Abensberg the Austrians put up a much sterner resistance than historically and ended up retreating through Allied pressure, rather than being routed wholesale. It was thus with a clear conscience I could proceed with Eckmuhl on the same historical basis.

The main sources of reference I found useful were not surprising:

Thunder on the Danube, Volume I   by John Gill. A thorough, detailed  historical account with good maps and orbats.

Eagles over Bavaria 1809 by Michael Hopper. Brilliant breakdown into manageable wargame scenarios, roughly at my 1:40-50 scale, so particularly helpful and I pulled on it enthusiastically for my version.

Eggmühl 1809 by Ian Castle, Osprey campaigns series Nr 56. A really nice book on the whole Bavarian campaign with useful maps and illustrations including some modern day photos of the terrain

Echmuhl 21-23 April 1809 - Great Battles of History Refought by P.P.H. Heath . I was only referred to this after I'd done the work but it's an interesting breakdown of the detail for wargame purposes 

and for nostalgia's sake:

Napoleon and the Archduke Charles, by F. Loraine Petre 1909 but mine is the 1976 reprint (Charles Grant's old copy in fact!). Not so detailed but back in the day when I first got into this (mid1970s to early 1980s) it was about all there was apart from Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon

I like to ask what it was that each commander was trying to achieve in  the big picture. In Napoleon's case, on 21-22nd April, to unite his army for a crushing blow which would push the northern Austrian army across the Danube, out of Bavaria, and into Bohemia, so he could once again destroy Austria's military power.  For Archduke Charles, ironically, it became the same in reverse. By 22nd April he had gained Regensburg and the Danube crossing so wanted to unite his army from the northern bank to the southern and create an offensive against the Allies to  curb any further Allied attempts to thwart his invasion of Bavaria. Neither commander actually knew the true position of his opponent, but Napoleon got his act together first with fast moving troops while Charles was having one of his many "off days" it seems, making over-complicated instructions not really rooted in reality.

Archduke Charles watches the
 Allied approach from above Rogging
 (AB Miniatures by Paul B)

Napoleon and Lannes supervise
the Wurttemburgers' assault on Eckmuhl
(AB Miniatures by CG)

Here is the map I worked up on one of Gill's to give to the players to explain the strategic situation.

Marshal Davout with about half his infantry and most of his cavalry from III Corps had been watching , and skirmishing with, the Austrians from Abbach to Schierling since the battle of Hausen-Teugn on 19 April.  By 21 April he was being backed up by Bavarians under Lefebvre  who had come from the Abensberg battle.   He was convinced that he faced the main Austrian army  to his East, around Eckmuhl, but Napoleon didn't believe it. On that 21 April  Napoleon, Lannes, Bessieres and Vandamme  had pursued the routing troops of Hiller's wing all the way from the Abensberg battlefield to Landshut. The Austrians lost huge amounts of ordnance and baggage en route until they were finally able to reform on the South bank of the Isar at Landshut and begin an organised retreat Southeast. Only then did it click with Napoleon that this was not the main Austrian Army and that Archduke Charles was in fact much further North. 

During the evening of 21 April - with order changes throughout the night into 22 April, a rather mixed up Charles created a plan to take back control. His northern force consisted of the rather disheartened and weakened Corps of Hohenzollern and Rosenberg (III and IV Corps) and the I Reserve Corps of Cuirassiers and Grenadiers. Since the bridge over the Danube at Regensburg was now gained his II Corps was ordered to cross and, with the others, form five "columns" to drive a wedge through some fantasy Allied force between Abbach and Alteglofsheim. To do this he totally wrecked the Corps structures of III, IV and I Reserve and effectively emasculated whatever leadership cohesion there had been hitherto (not much!). In practice the constant reorganisation, new instructions and confusion left  too large an area to defend south of Schierling and Eckmuhl and the defensible area contracted as the realisation gradually dawned that he'd been outwitted and outmanoeuvred. 

In the early hours of 22 April Napoleon had split his southern force, with Bessieres to watch Hiller's retreat, and all the rest, including Massena and the entire Heavy Cavalry Corps, marching at full speed due North from Landshut. This is one of those forced marches for which the early Napoleonic Imperial period is famous and so, while Davout and Lefebvre watched patiently from the hills above Schierling, thus pinning their opposition to the Eckmuhl high ground, Napoleon, by early afternoon, brought  the equivalent of a good sized infantry Corps and a Cavalry Corps into play, with more to back them up. Charles' immediate force was completely outnumbered and ironically, in ignorance he had withdrawn strong forces of Grenadiers and Cuirassiers which could have made a big difference.

Two French Cuirassier Brigades. Various manufacturers from collections of CG and James Fergusson. Artillery - AB Miniatures by Paul B. (Photo credit - Stuart C.)

Austrian infantry - AB Miniatures by Paul B. (Photo credit - Stuart C.)

Making Eckmuhl a "fair" wargame refight

Maybe I've been a bit tough on Archduke Charles in the above, but seriously, even the most hardened Austrophiles (and there are two in my group) need a bit of TLC and a helping hand to make this a balanced wargame. I started by metaphorically throwing all the cards up in the air to see how they landed. By that I mean Charles had destroyed his own Corps structure and command chains so I looked at all the various Brigade and Division sized units which could have been in striking distance of my battle area (the green rectangle on the map above)  - there proved to 15 of them. Then gave Charles his three Senior Commanders - Hohenzollern, Rosenberg and Liechstenstein and he could allocate 13 of the 15 among them as he wished. The Austrian deployment area was large and I divided it up into layered Zones 1 to 5, with theoretically a senior commander in each of 2 - 5. The units only had hold/defend the local area type orders, until messengers were received from Charles. In extreme cases that might take 6 Moves.  Here is the map I gave the Austrians to help Paul B decide on his deployment .

This is the overall map. Big rectangle is the usable "battle area", the inner rectangle 12 squares x 8, is the actual tabletop. Austrian zones in red and the indication of Allied deployment in blue dotted lines. Much more on this map in the next post

The remaining two units were Vecsey's flanking force in Zone 1B and Vukassovich's light troops in and around Eckmuhl (Zone 1A). Paul was also plentifully provided with dummy blinds too so could choose where to give a stronger impression than he had troops for.

This is the map I gave to Richard Newcombe and Tony Dillon as Napoleon and Davout for the Allies.

This was a lot nearer the historical dispositions per Corps/Division than for the Austrians since I felt it would work to develop the advance with the three days we had, and the amount of players. Zone A is an "imaginary" Montbrun as the French flank guard force of light cavalry and infantry - he was not on my official orbat as I did not really want a massed French cavalry outflanking move so far off the table area. Zone B is Davout's III Corps and also under Tony's command at the start Lefebvre's Bavarians and Demont's French in Zones C, D, and E. St Germain's Cuirassier brigade was also at the forefront of this force in Zone C.

South of the Grosse Laaber river Zone F was for Vandamme's Wurttemburg Light infantry and cavalry with horse artillery who will be expected to engage Eckmuhl schloss and village at the outset of our game. In Zone G are the main mass of the French Heavy Cavalry (14 regiments in total for our whole refight across the southern part of the battlefield). These are nominally under Lannes' command but Napoleon is also near at hand. The A2W rules make allowance for a combination of exceptional commanders acting in cohesion to get things going quickly. Zones H and K are for Lannes' two French Infantry Divisions. That Zone J off the map represents the approach route for more cavalry and infantry under Massena later on.

General Vukassovich defends Eckmuhl bridge and schloss with Grenzers, light cavalry and artillery, while the Wurttemburger Light infantry are poised to attack from Unter Deggenbach

To their left, along the Grosse Laber, Austrians prepare to defend Rogging and Pfakofen against the approaching columns of Lannes' infantry 

The game was to start at 1.40pm on 22nd April and if we could got through 18 Moves at 20 minutes per Move it could take us up to the start of dusk around 7.30-8pm. The whole available Austrian army amounted to 67,000 men represented by around 1500 figures . The Allied force which I would allow to arrive in time totalled 89,000 men represented by just short of 2000 figures.

I think that is enough for now and next time I will explain about the design of the battlefield and how I constructed it.

For those who want the full briefs and orbats the resources I made for this refight can be found here , or under Eckmuhl in the 1809 Campaign folder in the Napoleonic Downloads at right. 

The initial deployment of those troops which are visible. Green plastic "blinds" conceal those which are not revealed yet, or are dummies.