Austerlitz 220

The 220th Anniversary of the decisive battle of Austerlitz, at the height of the Napoleonic Glory Years, caught the Wollongong Wargamers a little by surprise. However Peter and Gary stepped in at short notice to organise a game.

To my mind a historical recreation of the entire battle can be a little hard on the Allied players, but Peter and Caesar were happy to be given the thankless task of marching into Napoleon's trap!

Whereas I quickly volunteered to play on the French side, and was allocated Soult's Corps. In this scenario, my main objective was to hold a thin defensive line for a couple of turns before significant reinforcements turned up to retake the Pratzen Heights.

At the southern end of the line Vandamme's division is indeed spread a little thin! I send forward both my cavalry brigades in a attempt to frustrate the Russian advance...

The Russian infantry forms square as you'd expect, at the cost of slowing down their advance.

Their Cossacks have been reluctant to advance, but eventually they roll up and its my turn to form square!

The Russian cavalry challenges my cavalry's attempts to slow down the advance. At first things go the Russian way, with many French units shaken...

But finally reinforcements arrived, and started to turn things around.

It was now the turn of the Russians to have shaken units and wavering brigades!

Further north my colleague David was doing the heavy lifting attempting to shift the Austrians and Russians off the Pratzen.

This was initially hard going at first, despite David's 'Attaque a l' outrance' approach, throwing everything at the enemy time after time...

The Allies were fighting back hard and looked to be securely in possession of the heights. But French reinforcements were also arriving on this side of the battle.

David lost no time in sending these in!

And his persistence paid off - whilst the Allies remained in possession, here too Allied wavering brigades outnumbered French ones!

There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow. Napoleon Bonaparte.

Once again Valour & Fortitude allowed a large game to be a fast one, and provided that feeling of the tipping point being reached, then the tide of battle turning, the hallmark of a good set of rules.

My thanks to Gary and Peter, left, for organising, to Caesar for being a challenging but sporting opponent across the southern flank, and to David, right, for doing all the hard work on the Pratzen and his constant injunctions to 'Charge 'em!'