This post is for my wargaming friends Peter, Craig, and Kevin who suffered through my 15mm 1859 scenario on Friday night.
With introductory rules, a (probably) too numerous contingents, and a flawed deployment consignments, the battle was only half-concluded by late night.
The next morning, looking at the table, thinking to put everything away, I decided I had the time to play the game out and perhaps clean-up the rules in the process…and yes, have fun playing.
We had concluded on Friday with the Austrian maneuver, so I started at the “top of the inning” with the Piedmontese continuing their rather ‘measured’ advance on the Austrian held river crossings. I continued with Peter’s usual low dice rolls for unit initiative [ in fact, rolling no higher than 3 for all twelve Piedmontese units! This on a simple d6 die…..]
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| The Piedmontese army of 1859. |
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| The Piedmontese advance (left) and the Austrians (in white) defending the town and river crossings |
The French continued their attack on the Austrian left wing. The Grenadiers of the French Imperial Guard combined and threw back a Hungarian unit but the attached French General was killed. This would not help the activation of the other units in his division.
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| The French Guard Grenadiers combine to attack the 'Hungarian' unit. |
The ‘African’ Division of elite Zouaves, Turcos, and French Foreign Legion had already been worn down but the large stoic Austrian formations.
A interesting combat happened as the tiny but eager French Guard Lancers unit , resplendent in white, charged into their Austrian counterparts down the tree-lined road but were ignominiously bounced! They quickly rallied but the second round on combat against the equally tiny unit of Austrian Uhlans all but destroyed both units.
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| The tiny French Guard Lancers (in white) charging down the road - to their doom.... |
The now infamous particular Piedmont unit formed in road column ready to assault the town crossing, again rolled several successive ‘1’ for maneuver, declining every effort to move, like it had for Peter! It was thus that the Piedmontese struggled to get any coordinated attack against the towns. However, in a bold, some may suggest foolhardy attack, the small unit of elite Piedmontese Bersaglieri moved gained the most northern town and surprisingly continued to hold it against overwhelming odds as the Austrian masses could not coordinate any serious counter-attacks. But the Austrian attacks would eventually occur against the small unit beleaguered Bersaglieri so the Piedmont General attached himself to the only untouched infantry unit left to him and would try to lead it across the bridge into the town. However, the well-placed Austrian guns along side the town blasted him and many of the would-be attackers, stifling all thought of further Piedmontese assaults.
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| The elite Bersaglieri (on road) bravely attack against overwhelming numbers and succeed to gain the town! (yes, dice rolls had much to do with this!) |
It must be confessed that the Austrian commander started his retreat north to his LOC but that the Piedmont holding of the their only town was tenuous and the French elite troops were largely destroyed, this might have been premature ....but very historically accurate depiction of the Austrian High Command attitude!
The battle was concluded at that point, both sides worn to exhaustion but the Austrians with more intact units giving them the slight victory.