Thursday 26 February 2009

A Frivolous Action! Part 2

Turns 4 and 5 saw the musketry duel in the centre develop. Kornberg was struggling to form a better battleline. His grenadiers reformed in four deep line behind the cover of the stone wall, and his gun was moved to fill the gap between them and the fusiliers. The dragoons moved up to the right flank of the fusiliers and deployed into two deep line.


Some poor shooting from his men prompted Soubise to advance slightly to close the range. Meanwhile, his jaeger circled around the left flank of the grenadiers.


The musketry duel was largely ineffective, both sides losing little more than a handful of men. Kornberg was fortunate not to be more severely punished, his forces generally having fewer men able to fire due to the evolutions being asked of them. The Gensdarmes lost two men to enemy fire in these turns: while not severe, this discouraged them from advancing further and they were therefore unable to deploy into line.


Turn 6 saw the critical moment: one squadron of the dragoons charged the Gensdarmes. The resultant melee saw the Gensdarmes lose two men to the dragoon's one and thereby decide to go rather precipitously to the rear. Elsewhere firing continued to take a steady, if small, toll of both sides.


Turn 7 added to Soubise problems. Kornberg's jaeger emerged from the woods to pour fire onto the Gensdarmes, and knock down another 3 cavalrymen. If Soubise's problems were not bad enough, the fire of the fusiliers shot down two officers from the left flank musketeers regiment. As that regiment had already lost one officer earlier it was suddenly looking very fragile despite having the fullest ranks of any regiment on the field.


Turn 8 added to Soubise's misery with another officer falling and, inevitably, the regiment now gave way. Soubise had moved to join the Gensdarmes and was now struggling to reform them while they were being tormented by the fire of Kornberg's jaeger.



Soubise's Left Gives Way


The last four turns saw Kornberg able to gradually mop up. Soubise did finally manage to get the Gensdarmes to charge the jaeger that were tormenting them. However, they lost another four men in the charge and fell below half strength. On the other flank, the second musketeer battalion found itself engaged by the main strength of Kornberg's forces and inevitably gave way, albeit after a splendid resistance. Soubise's Jaeger and gun were left to absent themselves by devious paths.

2 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

Attractive game and nice battle report!

Bluebear Jeff said...

Nice terrain too.


-- Jeff