1809 Project: Hausen-Teugn-Dünzling Part 3 - Noon till the Thunderstorm

I will assume my dear readers are familiar with Parts One and Two of this refight - here is a link to the previous part.

This post describes the second day of our weekend. At close of play on Saturday I had managed to use the available French to hold back the Austrian surge long enough to present a reasonably coherent line, protecting the main objective of the Abensberg - Saalhaupt road. This meant Paul B and Steve J, when they arrived about 0930ish,  were able to have a brief chat, divide the French forces and work out what to do. Dillon and Guy had operated the Austrians the previous day, stayed overnight, had breakfast and therefore plenty of time to work on their own course of action.

All assembled, from left Guy, Dillon, Steve J, Paul B, CG

Guy operated Rosenberg's IV Corps on the Austrian right; Dillon had Hohenzollern's III Corps on the left and was also Archduke Charles, C-in-C and with control of the Reserve Grenadiers. Marshal Davout was played by Steve operating the French right with St Hilaire's Division and elements of Friant's and sundry reinforcements. Paul B used the rest of Friant's troops and the Division of General Montbrun to hold the left flank.

I apologise in advance that there are rather a lot of photos, but a lot happened and in particular in the closing stages it is worth showing individual unit successes and failures. I'll try to let the photos tell most of the story. We recommence at Move 5 starting at Noon.

The main revelation from scouting was Guiton's Cuirassier brigade securing the line of communication to Regensburg near Saalhaupt. (Super AB figures from Paul B's collection) (NB - Paul's command bases are all named but for the purposes of our game read the green printed commander labels)

At the Hausenerburg crest Dillon's Austrian infantry have retreated to safety West of the road, but he's pressing downhill on the right. Below is what it looks like to the French

Badly outnumbered Paul is making a fighting withdrawal while Guy resumes his great Initiative dice for the mediochre Austrian commanders to press on into Westerholz

For the moment the Experienced French Horse Artillery battery is covering a
 vital road gap and inflicting sufficient casualties to worry Neustadter's Brigade

Above and Below:
Two views along the French right where Davout
 is having to settle for protecting the road line

Gautier's Brigade manages to see off this Austrian downhill attack - for now, and his LI are attempting to outflank through the thick woods

In Part One I explained that Archduke Charles had to gain some certainty by exposure of at least 50% of the on-table French before he could release the Reserve Division. That was achieved by about 1115 game time and so by 1245 or so the Grenadiers had arrived from Grub to a reserve position just on table. They were split into two blocks - the larger one just West of Schneidhart village and the other, with artillery,  a "Huge" single unit by my designation, just to the East. 

Grenadiers arrive by Schneidhart

Archduke Charles personally directs the larger muti-brigade contingent. The huge brigade is a little to the East

About half an hour later they moved off in march column towards the
other shoulder of the Hausenerberg ridgeline

Close-up view of French Legere putting up some resistance near
 Moosholzen. The 3-model battery should really be 2 but Paul had
 some fixed larger battery models we had to use.

Pajol presently with the 7th and 5th Hussars in a holding position awaiting developments North of Westerholz. Montbrun keeps the Cuirassiers further back still.

Prior to another downhill advance the big Austrian battery
on Hausenerburg crest (see below) has at last forced Davout's
heavy battery to retreat from Buchburg through Teugn

Meanwhile Davout organises another attack on the extreme right shoulder of Hausenerburg

A large mass of Austrian Grenadiers proceeds between
 Schneidhart and Hausen

This aerial view shows a dangerous hole in the French line just South of Teugn. There are some Blinds unrevealed behind the village and the rear woods. I don't get the impression Dillon is put off, just lacking sufficient command initiative to exploit it.

Rosenberg's Corps has now got some serious numbers North
of Moosholzen but French line regiments are putting up resistance

Where the arm of Westerholz is nearest the road the Austrian 44th Inf Regiment has evidently found an easy way through and is closely engaging those Horse artillerymen....but Montbrun is in the opposite woods with the 11th Chasseurs a Cheval......

In the foreground an Austrian regiment is heading downhill to confound the French line, but help for Steve is at hand. The French have done well to keep the Abensberg road open this long for Petit's Brigade of Gudin's Division had been recalled and now made it along that road.

That gave the front line brigade courage to press on again up the slope and beat back the Austrian infantry

Back at Moosholzen all those Austrian cannon had broken
 a French regiment

At this point in the game, around 1  to 1.30pm game time, a remarkable set of moves was set in train on the French left flank from Westerholz across to Dünzling and the hill slope between them. It's difficult to present coherently but I will try by two picture sequences. It started by the Horse Artillery, against the odds even though they were a high quality unit, beating off IR44 and evading away but towards other enemies. You can see them below at top left being attacked yet again from the woods.  That made space for Montbrun and Pajol to organise all three light cavalry regiments to combine to charge the Austrian 10th Hussars and 4th Chevauleger. The 11th Chasseurs charged out of the woods to take the Austrian Hussars in flank. The French Hussars managed to resist fire from some of Neustadter's infantry and charge home.

The big cavalry melee just near Gattersberg village

Before being flanked those stalwart HA got some more salvos off
and have shattered a weakened Austrian infantry brigade down
by the Dünzling bridge along the road to Paring

Above and below: Out of the melee 11th Chasseurs emerged triumphant as the Austrian cavalry have retreated and must go back multiple moves, and the Austrian Cavalry battery was broken and has surrendered........

.........7th and 5th Hussars also suffered enough hits to have to withdraw
 to the woods to reform. I will pick this up later.....

Above and below: At Moosholzen French units have melted away
and had to retreat, giving Rosenberg's men the opportunity to turn
 left to attack up the Hausenerberg from this end.

By the Buchberg roundshot from the crest battery has
seriously wounded St Hilaire, casing a basic quality
subordinate to take command of the Division

Steve looks dismayed as it is proving incredibly difficult to hold the road open under the fire of those 16 guns on the crest.........

....but he has Petit's fresh brigade, and attack seems the only worthwhile option. I imagine by now Dillon has realised all the Blinds on the North side of the road are dummies or trifling sized Corps HQ units

On Dillon's side of the Hausenerberg it's getting congested as there are so many large infantry units, many are retreating or reforming and the Grenadiers are keen to try to get through.

Trying to make the most of this apparent respite Steve attacks
 uphill (yet again), this time with Petit's French line regiments

The sweeping French cavalry attack on their extreme left takes on yet another shape. Below we see Guiton's Cuirassiers move into Westerholz, backed by the 7th Legere. The Hussars are reforming  and the HA battery had finally taken on too much and is back in the open woods recovering. That just left 11th Chasseurs à Cheval remaining to carve a name for themselves.

Led personally by Pajol the 11th attack and shatter an Austrian battery just outside the Westerholz....

Then, in accordance with the dice rolling for victorious cavalry follow up, they took the weak 55th infantry in the rear, with predictable result

There was now no valid Austrian opposition East of the Westerholz
which now had French Cuirassiers trying to trot through.
Only a small light infantry force and a battery held Saalhaupt but
Montbrun had effectively stabilised this flank and inflicted grievous losses  

At the Hausenerberg crest Austrian supremacy was now obvious though it would take time to organise
an attack on their main objective - Teugn village

Never giving up, French regiments continued to attack the now-revealed Austrians West of the Hausener high ground. For the moment at least that road to Abensberg still remained secure.

Result

Historically the two sides fought each other to more or less a standstill by late afternoon. Then Charles made a half hearted effort to use some Grenadiers, to no effect. The much anticipated huge thunderstorm broke and everyone scuttled off to cover. By next morning it emerged that the Austrians had retreated back to Hausen and their start positions more or less, leaving Davout in control of the Hausenerberg crest. Montbrun was content to protect the flank and had caused a standoff with probably three times the amount of enemy, who remained around Dünzling and back to Paring. Davout managed to get his baggage and most of his corps to safety and join up with the Bavarians.  It is generally judged to be a French victory both positionally and psychologically, as retrospectively, it was seen as the turning point of part one in the campaign. Afterwards most Austrian commanders felt confused and demoralised and a big retreat began leading to some strange manoeuvres South of the Danube which we shall refight in future.

Thunder and Lightning over Westerholz

In our battle our finishing time caught us at end of Move 9 - 2.30pm game time. I decreed the thunderstorm stopped the action early.  I'd hoped for about 12 moves to give the objectives a proper chance to be tested. If it had I think the Austrians were beginning to do better everywhere but on the Dünzling flank. If we'd had two players per side each day we'd have achieved that. 

For those interested in the detail here is a link again to the briefs and orbats for this game. I'm beginning to realise that Victory Points(VPs) for Army Point losses with my system is not very decisive - it's got quite hard to get units "Done For", so my targets for Victory were off. That was however balanced by the Terrain VPs.

As you can see from the chart 

Victory Points gained for Enemy units "Lost" was French 17.5, Austrians 11

Victory Points gained for Terrain won/held was     French  13,   Austrians  7

TOTALS                                                                                30.5      to      18  in the French favour

Conclusion

For my part I loved it! The players were absolutely great - both commanders duly marked up their maps clearly and took time to explain things to me, and all played to their utmost skill and ability throughout. They understood the objectives and tried their best to keep at it until successful or circumstances prevented progress, I could not  have asked for more. This version of the rules worked very well for the most part, and I felt gave a good atmosphere of large Napoleonic forces striving over difficult terrain and with limited knowledge of the enemy. Yet it still had sufficient granuality to identify particular units and follow their progress.  I really enjoyed seeing some of the tactics in play - particularly with the extensive number of light troops.  Paul B's handling of Montbrun's cavalry, LI and HA was masterly. It was particularly gratifying seeing that a combination of command characteristics (Pajol and Montbrun at the high end of the scale) and troops types could occasionally produce decisive, yet realistic and exciting results against superior numbers.

Thanks to all the participants at this event and to Richard N for helping to develop the rules. We've had lots of email discussion post event to work on the few extra changes, and once the next version is sorted I will probably do a blog post giving a brief outline and some downloads.

Footnote

Couple of things I forgot:

Steve Johnson gave a nice report of the second day of this game on his blog Wargames with toy soldiers 1685-1985.blogspot.com

Also as Guy reminds in his Comment, it is worth putting in a plug for the ancient Bear Inn at Bisley where he and Dillon kindly treated The Duchess and me to a fine dinner. Bear Inn