Battle of Jenastaedt 1813 - The Advance to Contact !

Battle of the Day

Continued from Part 1

At 0600hrs, the battle begins ...

All goes well for the advance. By 0630hrs the French have been spotted, and both the Russian and Prussian Divisions successfully roll to upgrade their orders from 'Probe' to 'Engage'.

Note that that in front of each unit is their current order - a yellow token representing the Probe order, and behind the unit is the next order in the queue - an orange arrow representing the Engage order.

At the end of the NEXT turn, the order is advanced on the queue, and each Division will begin a more aggressive Engagement action.

Advancing through the hedges before Schimmelpfennig, the Prussians scout forward with their Jagers and a brief firefight develops in the farmlands.

A regiment of French Legere is stationed here, so despite the large numbers of Prussians, the French still have superiority in the number of skirmishers deployed.

However, as thousands of troops march forward to engage the enemy, the skirmishing fire is largely inneffective to stop them.

Medium effective range with saved fire (x2), into line infantry with a skirmisher screen (-2) - rolls a 10, gets 2 Morale hits and 2 base kills.

The Russian Jagers lose half their effectives, and retire to the left flank, Shaken,  The remaining Russian line marches stoically forward, like automatons.

Being on engage orders, the Prussians advance in a direct line towards the enemy - half a move distance each player's phase.  (4" advance, twice per turn).

This actually places them in base contact with the French by 0820 hrs, however the French player exersizes their option to fall back half a move (200 meters) to avoid contact.

Skirmish fire continues during this fighting withdrawal, however Schimmelpfennig has now fallen to the Allies.

Just to the left of the Prussians, the Russians roll forward towards the artillery.

More French fire gets a good roll, with another base of Russians knocked out of the battle, and the regiment on the right becoming rattled.  But still the Russians march on !

The Russian advance is starting to look just like this :

Lets see if it can end the same way for the Russians on the tabletop !

As the Allied advance rolls on past Schimmelpfennig, towards Jenastaedt, the Prussians continue to press forward.

The French Legere, having fallen back as far as the main line now, decide to pull in their skirmishers, and stand fast to receive the attack.

In an unusual change of fortune for the French, they assume line formation whilst Prussian skirmishers harrass their position unopposed. The French unit takes some hits from the skirmish fire, and becomes disordered.

At the same time, the Russian line makes contact with the French artillery, and closes to engage them in a close firefight. Having exhausted their saved fire on the previous phase, the French artillery get off a few close shots before the Russians make contact.

By this stage, all of the Russian regiments are rattled, but continue forward despite some minor losses and hit the artillery.

The French artillery are also starting to waiver from this attack at close range. They become disordered, and just scrape through making a panic test. They hold. A close firefight develops.

On the extreme French right wing, more Russians close to engage les Invalides.

The French manage to get off a decent volley from their prepared defensive position,  however the Russians are unmoved.

With the Pavlov guard themselves holding the line, they advance to within 30 paces of the French and blast them with a volley of their own. The French are disordered.

If the Russians had been on 'attack' orders, they would have broken through and continued another round of combat with the bayonet ... however this is a less intensive pinning attack, with the aim of tying down the French and avoiding too many casualties.

So far, so good ....

Within the next hour, should be a good time to order 1st Corps to advance and begin the general assault.

Continue on to read Part 3  ... the Firefight.