Battle for the Bridgehead

The Bridgehead: sadly no giant cats here..

 Having gained some new recruits to my forces, I thought it was time to revisit The Portable Seven Years War. What has been happening in our somewhat obsure corner of central Europe? The Prussians, perhaps smarting from the repulse of their earlier incursion, have re-grouped and are essaying  another raid into Austrian terrritory. 

Once again I turned to Neil Thomas'  One Hour Wargames  excellent scenario suggestions, and soon found an interesting example with an element of the cross-border raid. Specifically, scenario number 5 : 'Bridghead'. As Neil Thomas describes it,   

'The Blue  army has discovered a river crossing in Red territory, and is aiming to secure it. The Red general is frantically trying to mobilise every available unit, in order to stop the enemy bridgehead from being formed'.  

'Blue' will be the Prussian raiders, and 'Red' the Austrian defenders. Conveniently I am able to use a 9 by 9 hex layout, which is the same size as Mr. Thomas' suggested 3 feet square table; see the picture above, looking South to North. ( Sadly the giant cat, deployed by  'Red' as shown in Ross Mac's recent Battle Gameof the Month post for the same scenario, was not available to me ).   

The scenario specifies that each side has 6 units, and the Prussians will have just one unit deployed at the start, just North of the bridge. They then add  one unit per turn from Turn 2 to Turn 6, entering on the road at the Southern edge.  The Austrians start with no units in position, but deploy two units on each of turns 1, 3 and 5,  each group's entry point decided by dicing - either at the Western edge by the wood, by  the road from  the North, or at the Eastern edge by the hill. Given this  sequence of events, the defenders will actually outnumber the raiders on Turn 1, Turn 3 and Turn 5, and may be able to isolate and  overwhelm the the invader's  vanguard early on - so it should be interesting stuff.

And so to the available forces: using the random selection method from Neil Thomas' book, I rolled the dice and came up with the following nicely varied brigades  ( with Strength Points  for Bob Cordery's Portable Napoleonic Wargame ) :  

Prussians:  

Three units Line Infantry : two of Line Fusiliers, one of Von Kleist Frei Korps  (each 4SP )

Two units Cavalry :  one of von Kleist Uhlans, one of von Kleist Horse Grenadiers (each 3 SP) 

One unit 'Rifles'  ( singly-based figures detached for this purpose from Von Kleist Frei Korps )              - 3 SP. 

And of course their commander, Eric von Jemanden, his hasty promotion confirmed after the               narrow victory at Heiligtumshugel .

The two units of cavalry should give them some advantage in striking fast to gain the bridgehead. All units are rated Average except the Elite Rifles; with von Jemanden's 6SP, the force total is 27 SP, and thus their Exhaustion Point is reached at the loss of  9 SP. 

And here they are, on the march for the bridge : 

Prussian raiders : plenty of cavalry for a strike force

Austrians: 

Four Units Line infantry - two from the newly-recruited Botta regiment, two from our old                  friends the 'Wildganse' Jaegers (really Prussians, cunningly inveigled into migrating to Vienna)               - each 4 SP.

One unit 'Rifles' , actually  dismounted Grenze Hussar figures  - 3 SP.

One unit Artillery  ( 2 SP).

Their commander, the brave General Dachs, successful in repelling invaders in the previous                    campaign. 

No cavalry, but lots of infantry firepower and some artillery support should be good in defence. All units are rated Average except the Elite Rifles; with Dachs'  6SP, the force total is also 27 SP, and  Exhaustion Point is reached at the loss of  9 SP.

 

Dachs' defenders: Botta regiment debut

I decided that the Prussians would be able to specify the order in which their units arrived, since they were the attackers and will have planned the operation and their order of march;  while the Austrians would randomly select the units in each  arriving group, as well as the entry point, thus reflecting their hurried scraping-together of a defending force.   Neil Thomas specifies a maximun of 15 turns, with victory to the side holding the bridgehead,  with no enemy units on the North bank of the river within 3 hexes of the bridge.   

And so, let the battle commence. Von Jemanden decided that his advance guard would be the von Kleist Uhlans;  Dachs' die rolling  selected the first battalion Botta regiment and the Rifles, entering by road from the North on turn one.   Sensibly the Bottas deployed into line to receive any possible Uhlan charge, while the rifles took to the hill in dispersed formation: 

Turn One: 'Uhlans, sir!'  'Muskets ready, my lads..'

 

And there we have it. Next time, we shall see how things turn out.  Keep well, everyone.