06:15 8th August 1870: North of Rittershoffen.
Stats and rules can be seen here: https://madlemmey.blogspot.com/2019/07/black-powder-1870-stats-and.html
Allied German Brief:
After the pursuit from Sprichen and Wissembourg, you have tracked elements
of French 1st Corps, to just north of the Hagenau forest. They are
obviously trying to retire to Strasbourg, and you will need to move decisively
to stop them entering the forest. You have the Wurttemberg Division, 1st
Bavarian Corps and VIII Prussian Corps (detached from von Steinmetz after
Saarbruken to pursue elements of V Corps) nearby, but at present you have no
idea where main body of the French are massing. Your best option, after consultation
with the other senior officers, is to strike hard before the French reach Hagenau
and then on to Strasbourg, where you know VII Corps is assembling.
The Bavarians and Wurttemberg forces were badly mauled at
Sprichen, and are after blood; you may need to exert some control on them!
French Brief:
Rittershoffen. 3rd Division, 1st Corps.
Well, that’s not gone according to plan!
After the retreat from Sprichen, you have become separated
from the rest of 1st Corps, and you have no idea where they are, or
what orders to follow. You have managed to keep Lartigue and 4th
Division nearby, and have picked up elements of V Corps and 3rd
Cavalry Division, but at present you have no idea where the Army of the Rhine is
massing. Your best option, after consultation with the other senior officers,
is to retire towards Hagenau and then onto Strasbourg, where you know VII Corps
is assembling.
This will involve moving through the Hagenau forest, so you decided
to rest and recover here before sorting a marching order. However, German
forces have been observed approaching to the North, you will need to make a
stand here instead.
The general situation on the 6th, from a map
ripped from a school boy’s atlas and your notes!
Time to get out the Franco-Prussians
This turned into a four player game, as Nick could not make it. Dice were thrown to determine who was who.
Chris 'won' and got the French.
Graham got the Wurttembergers.
Dave got the Bavarian 1st Corps (again).
And I rolled for Mark, who was the tardy Prussians (Mark was running late, so good thing the Prussians could roll to enter from turn 2 onwards).
I was umpiring, and laughing, a lot.
The table, South to the right (at present, the balloon drifted in the winds). The French would be deploying in and around the village.
The deployment map
What the table looked at.
Special rules:
French:
3rd Division and 3rd Cavalry
Division may be held in hidden deployment until the Germans either move into
line of sight or you advance them, due to presently being in dead ground to the
south of Rittershoffen.
Major Victory: Destroy an enemy corps.
Minor Victory: Break 3 divisions from the enemy forces.
Wurttemberg Additional
Brief:
The Prussians,
despite you division’s valiant attack on the heights of Wissenbourg, still
doubt your commitment to this fight. Time to show them how wrong they are! Both
you and von Tan-Rathsamhausen feel slighted by this Prussian ‘hummel’.
Special
rules: If you are attacking, your forces may add -1 to all initiative rolls
and may count as +1 to all morale rolls.
Major
Victory: Take Rittershoffen before the ‘allies’.
Minor
Victory: Capture an eagle (if you break a French unit in HtoH, roll 2D6 on an
11 or 12, you capture their flag).
Bavarian
Additional Brief:
How DARE von
Goeben presume to order you around! He arrived late at Sprichen, and is
attempting to steal your glory for successfully peeling these French forces
away from their main body and isolating them. You know the Wurttemberg forces
feel the same, so you mission is simple, cause more damage than the Prussians!
Special
rules: If you are attacking, your forces may add -1 to all initiative rolls
and may count as +1 to all morale rolls.
Major
Victory: Take Rittershoffen before the Prussians.
Minor
Victory: Cause more damage than the Prussians.
Dave, the Bavarian commander sorts out his line of march (and wishes he put the figures back more carefully after the last game). He appears to be two Jagers stands short, will sort that for next time, honest!
Graham, playing the Wurttemberg forces, realised that although they are only classed as a division, they have the command structure of an 1850s Austrian Corps.
The other massive disadvantage of his force is that it only has ONE commander for all those units, so without decent command values is almost entirely unusable.
They also suffered rather at Wissembourg, so their morale was only 5+, fragile, unless attacking.
Graham rolled a 9.
That might be good enough!
The French composite forces deploy. Elements of V Corps hold the village, 4th Division Ist Corps holds the orchards to the west of the two. Two more divisions are held in secret in 'dead ground' as a possible reserve.
A lone Chasseurs a Pied wonders whether has enough to hold an entire flank!
Glory shot of the Wurttemberg Division, I've only had it on table once before, and knowing Graham, this would be as far as they go tonight.
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Graham! If Graham is going to roll command dice like that, I don't think they have anything to worry about! They're so fast the sketch artist cannot keep up...
Graham has to look up how far horse artillery goes, been a while...
So secret and so wondrous, we wonder how we are meant to use it? Wonder why we've got it? Wonder where it should be? Wonder where we left the instructions!
Previously, mitrelleuse have had a habit of jamming in their first shots, but Chris's crew knew exactly what they were doing, scoring 3 disordering hits on one of Graham's limbered batteries.
And here's one firing.
Turn 2, and shock, horror, the Wurttemberg Division successfully makes another triple move! They are now in chassepot range as they crest the small rise out of the village, so are met by furious fire from the French (all but the Turco units have 'sharpshooter' skill, meaning that they re-roll one miss per turn, representing the better shooting training the French had undergone since adopting the fearsome rifle).
The general situation of round 2, the Wurttembergers really want their glory as they advance again.
Ohhh, haven't seen him for while! The Prussian secret weapon, a Tribble in Picklehaube!
ANYWAY... The Wurttemberg horse artillery takes more accurate and definitely not jamming mitrailleuse hits and breaks.
The central and right hand jagers take sustained fire from the French front line, which also features two artillery batteries.
The Wurttemberg gun line, fully formed up, pounds the division in the orchard, but to no effect.
In the distance, the Bavarians struggle getting over a drainage ditch. You'ld think a commander named Schumacher would be quicker!
Behind the Wurttemberg gun line (and their reiters who had been disordered by the left hand Chasseurs a Pied on the hill), the Prussian VIII Corps under von Goeben moves up quickly.
Not sure whether Graham is trying to be Spiderman, or a rock god, but the Wurttemberg Division makes another massive move! On the left, the Prussians advance, on the right, the Bavarians keep pace.
The whole Bavarian Corps, basically making a hash of crossing that drainage ditch with his corps artillery!
The Prussians have split their divisions, one aiming squarely at the hill on the left, while the other division moves up behind the Wurttemberg infantry.
Prussian guns move up, someone has remembered to read the Prussian field manual about using artillery and gets the guns into a line.
The Wurttemberg infantry takes defensive positions behind the enclosure, as one of their number is disordered and has been left behind by the volume of fire from French positions in the woods.
Two corps of artillery target the mitrailleuse battery in the wood. They had brought attention to themselves and started playing catch the shell!
And they pull away, short on ammo maybe, to fight again another day.
One of those 'what on EARTH are you thinking about' moments as Chris advances the French out of their secure cover, into the open, to try and catch the Wurttemberg infantry at short range.
It is not as effective as he planned, even with sharpshooter, they could not hit a barn door, the Wurttemberg return of fire was to be the start of the undoing of this French force.
Then, as Chris is trying to advance his zouaves into the flank of the Allied line, the night's first blunder appears, and the elite troops scatter backwards two moves and out behind the wood.
Forwards, not back!
Then von Goeben decided to try and steal the allies thunder by attacking a brigade up the hill into the Chassuers a Pied. The only thing Chris can do is send in the Dragoons, after we reminded him they were his, repeatedly.
Which results, almost inevitably, in a dead draw! Meanwhile, the poor little Chasseurs a Pied, on two dice vs the 8 of an attack column of Prussian infantry, holds firm!
And on their second combat, hold even firmer! 5 hits, 5 saves!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9h5A29ASE
No one has moved! At all!
To the rear, von Goeben turns round to the Wurttemberg Reiters, not even on his command list, and orders them to charge.
A true disciple of von Steinmetz, ordering troops that are not his.
"I am the commander of this battle, you will charge those French cavalry on the hill!"
"With respect sir, you do not command us, so would you mind, kindly, buggering off!"
Mark rolled a 10, normally a pass, but as it was a double and an allied brigade, it counted as a blunder. The cavalry retire two moves backwards, leaving a fuming Prussian commander in their dust.
My favourite shot of the night. Graham has his arms over his two losses (that lone infantry unit fled), but otherwise there are over 1500 models on a 6' square table here, all painted by me, apart some of the Timecast buildings, and a couple of Jarkko's buildings at the other end of the table.
The French 3rd Division has been spotted. It had tried to move for the previous two turns, and completely failed, love the 'unreliable' rule which means you roll at -1 when trying to advance towards the enemy, it suits 1870 French perfectly.
The Bavarians try to swing round to try to envelop the village, and the Prussians are trying to break into the orchards to the left. The French troops of V Corps had retired back into their fortified positions, but were badly knocked about. We removed some of the buildings to allow the French to retire back into the village without standing on rooftops. More worrying, the Bavarian artillery was cresting the rise to the left, and ranging in on the French lancers.
The Lancers take a beating, but Chris's morale roll was amazing. At a -3 he rolls an 11! The cavalry retreat into cover, but do not break.
Contacted in the flank in the orchard by Prussians, the 48th line breaks on impact.
This leaves the battery in the orchard very exposed, and in an unhappy state.
Meanwhile, on the hill the mass brawl continues. The French cavalry gain the upper hand, and the Chasseurs hold off the Prussian brigade, again!
A shaky shot of the centre as the wind blew the balloon around suddenly, French fire picks off a Wurttenberg jager.
But too late, the Prussians crash into the flank of the battery and the rear of the Turcos.
On the hill, after crushing the Prussian infantry, the dragoons are targeted by every available Prussian gun and shatter backwards into the forest.
In Rittershoffen, the V Corps assets, after hours of fire from the Wurttembergers, cannot hold any more and their morale breaks. With the loss of the majority of 4th Division in the orchard, the French cannot hold any more, and as night fell, started to dissolve backwards into the Hagenau Forest.
But on the hill, the Chasseurs a Pied still held, memorials will be raised to these brave men.
As losses were counted up (really very few), the boys looked carefully at their victory conditions. Having broken a division and claimed the village, the Wurttembergers guaranteed themselves a major victory. The Bavarians failed in all their conditions. The Prussians claimed victory (again) but really the smallest state had come out with the glory today. The French had tried hard to break the Wurttemberg Division (it would have counted as a corps), but it did not work out.
As for the Chasseurs, the Prussians were threatened in their flank, and had to pull back from the hill, leaving the brave skirmishers to be escorted off table and into the ranks of legends!
Another top game. Lots of laughs and again, a very historical result.
It was only after I picked the battle site at random, I spotted this: http://www.abrihatten.fr/index-en.html
Looks like a lot of fun. I think need to dig out my 19th century stuff after reading this!
ReplyDelete