The Battle of Piacenza

After rattling through April and May map moves and the Battle of Parma last week, I was slow getting down to the Battle of Piacenza. Finally I got it done today.

This was another hard fought contest in terrain with lots of obstacles and cover. It was mostly an attentional slog in which the superior numbers of the Austro-Piedmontese prevailed.

3 turns in and the opposing columns are still marching up to compete for advantageous ground. (Bourbons from the left, Austro-Piedmontese from the right)

On the Bourbon left, infantry from Modena have occupied the Cascina and line of the stream. To their left Spanish dragoons have bounced Austrian cavalry who had crossed through the tree line.

Austrian foot in the centre have occupied a built up area with enclosures. Their brethren to their left have been battered by the Spanish guns in the foreground.

Turn 14. The Piedmontese (on the left of the Austrians) have finally formed up opposite the Neapolitans and both sides slugged it out for SEVERAL more turns.

Also turn 14. The Austrian advance in the centre has been shredded (note more the casualty markers on the right compared to those on the left of the picture). Despite this the two units centre right were to survive until the end. Across the tree line the combined Austrian grenadiers slug it out with Spanish infantry all game.

Another contest without decisive result. On the Austrian right repeated cavalry attacks fail to dislodge the Modenese infantry from the stream. I think I might upgrade the Modena troops following their experience.

After 25 turns the Neapolitans have broken. It was touch and go. Despite being outnumbered they made good use of the enclosure, inflicted as many hits on their Italian cousins from the north. The Piedmontese were the first to face a Wing Morale test but passed. Alas, King Carlos' men failed theirs. With stalemate in the centre and other wing, I called it a day and decided the Bourbon forces would retire in reasonable order and due to the terrain and losses on the Austrian cavalry, there would be no pursuit.

Following the game I diced for recovery of lost brigades and hits. The net outcome in terms of permanent losses are given below.

Bourbons

Neapolitans: Lost 1 brigade and 2 further hits on the remaining brigade.

Modenese: No hits

Spanish: lost 2 brigades inc the guards plus 2 further hits, no further hits on the cavalry

Austro-Piedmontese

Piedmontese: Lost 2 brigades and 3 further hits.

Austrians: 2 hits on cavalry, lost 1 infantry brigade, and 1 further hit. No further hits on artillery.

I'll work out what happens next in the campaign. I'm slightly concerned at the rate of attrition, especially for the Bourbons. Will they make it until the end of the year? Maybe the Bourbons need to lick their wounds and wait for winter for reinforcements. But can they do this without giving the Austrians a free hand to mop up Bourbon-aligned fortresses? It certainly looks like the Austrians are free to continue their siege of Piacenza. Will the Infante Felipe and Prince of Conti show their faces east of the Alpine passes again before the end of the campaigning season?

Po Valley Campaign - Late April and May 1742 - the Road to Piacenza

I played out several more weeks of map turns after the Battle of Parma. Not much happened for a few weeks. The Infante (Sp) and Conti  (Fr) remained a march from Ivrea on the edge of the Alps, blocked by an equally strong Piedmontese army under the guns of the fortress. Outside Parma the rival forces (Austrians on one side and Spanish-Neapolitan-Modenese on the other) stood warily watching each other, gathering in supplies from the countryside and recovering their wounded from the battle.

With a stronger force than the Habsburgs opposite him, Traun sent his Austrian hussars (most likely Hungarians) off to raid Bourbon supply lines. After further time he despatched his 4 battalions of Croat Grenzers to garrison Cremona (nearest of the Austrian controlled fortresses in Lombardy). His opponents could not agree what to do: Montemar wanted to remain at Parma and King Carlos and d'Este voted to return to Modena. [I diced for the decision of each of the 3 commanders each turn and without unanimity they remained put. Each turn the odds of moving increased.]

Up in Piedmont, King Charles Emmanuel, sent his militia brigades to garrison Turin and Cuneo, whilst despatching his own light troops to raid the Gallispans' supply lines.  He felt strong enough in Ivrea to defend without the detached troops. Traun's and Charles Emmanuel's decisions to despatch raiders paid off very quickly. Both Bourbon armies' supply trains were badly hit by the Pandours/Partisans, reducing the strength of their forces.

[Surprisingly on the first Event check I rolled a double 6: a double meaning an event has occurred. I then diced for the type of Event and it was 'Supply Train Attacked' and 10% was deducted from both Bourbon armies.]

This encouraged both the Gallispans (Franco-Spanish) in the Alps and the combined Spanish-Italians at Parma to move, falling back to France and Modena respectively.  The Infante and Conti will decide which of the routes back into Italy they will take, but they will be off the map for a month (unless they come back the same way!). Charles Emmanuel (Piedmont) despatched 4 infantry brigades under Aspremont to aid Traun. Traun moved west to attack Piacenza (a city controlled by the Spanish-leaning Duchy of Parma). He had siege lines constructed - 3 of his brigades were committed to this. Montemar, King Carlos and d'Este all agreed to attack Traun before he could establish batteries at Piacenza. They arrived from the east as Aspremont arrived from the north. A second battle is in the offing not 2 months into the campaign. Aspremont's arrival was crucial as his force could make up the shortfall in Austrian troops due to them having to man the siege trenches.

General situation before the Battle of Piacenza. The larger beads are the garrison forces referred to above. 

The Battle of Piacenza - Deployment

The forces deployed are:

Austro-Piedmontese

Austrian brigades: 1 grenadier, 4 line infantry, 3 cuirassiers, 2 dragoon, 2 artillery

Piedmontese brigades: 4 infantry

Bourbon Forces

Spanish brigades: 2 Guard/grenadiers; 3 line infantry, 1 cavalry, 1 artillery

Neapolitan brigades: 3 line infantry

Modenese brigades: 2 line infantry

The city is off to the north east of this map. I opted to have the opposing sides enter in columns in a race to secure advantageous ground. I'd considered using the dispositions from the actual battle of Piacenza in 1746 but that did not make much sense as the Bourbons started in the city.

Here are a few photos of the table set-up.

As before, the table is 1.2 x 1 metre representing just shy of 4 by 3 miles.

The Piedmontese

The powerful Austrian cavalry wing. But will they be able to operate effectively in the terrain criss-crossed with streams and trees? As with the Parma game, roads will count as linear obstacles when traversing them.

The Bourbon forces looking north. The Modenese in the foreground are being represented by Saxons, as other than the Piedmontese, I don't have any models painted specifically as Italian armies. In practical terms the difference between them all are the flags.

The Bourbon northern flank, made up of King Carlos' Neapolitans. I'm 'proxying' the Reichsarmee for these.

The War of the Austrian Succession In Italy - the factions

A comment from the Jolly Broom Man himself made me realise that I had failed in my duty to explain the different factions involved in the Italian campaigns of the WAS. It is all rather confusing but the following should set the record straight, at least for the Spanish branch of the Bourbons.

Charles III (Spanish: Carlos Sebastián de Borbón y Farnesio;^[a] 20 January 1716 – 14 December 1788) was King of Spain from 1759 until his death in 1788. He was also Duke of Parma and Piacenza as Charles I (1731–1735), King of Naples as Charles VII and King of Sicily as Charles III (or V) (1735–1759). He was the fourth son of Philip V of Spain and the eldest son of Philip's second wife, Elisabeth Farnese. During his reign, Charles was a proponent of enlightened absolutism and regalism in Europe.

Got that? Charles VII of Naples in the game yesterday, was simultaneously King Charles III/V of Sicily, had previously been Charles I of Parma and Piacenza, and later became Charles III. More can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_III_of_Spain

Philip V of Spain (Chucky's dad) was the greatgrandson of Louis XIV of France, and inherited the throne of Spain in 1700 from the last Habsburg King of Spain (and kept most of the patrimony at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession: keep up at the back!). Not sure why there's uncertainty on the regnal number for Sicily.

One of the other characters in the game posted yesterday was the Duke of Parma, (not to be confused with the Duke of Parma and Piacenza, above) was this chap, who arrived late in the battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_III_d%27Este

So we have the forces of the King of Spain (a Bourbon), backed up by one of his sons (the King of Naples etc). Elsewhere in the campaign is Phil V's 7th son, the Infante, Felipe. The guy with the French coming over the Alps. Why he was the Infante (sort of the Spanish Prince of Wales) when he was the 7th son I don't know, as he never ended up as King despite Phil V dying, and Phil V was succeeded by 2 of the Infante Phil's brothers. Anyway, this Phil was later Duke of Parma, Piacenza AND Guastalla. Are you still with me?

And don't forget, the French dynasty are also Bourbons. The Prince of Conti, the French leader working alongside Felipe the Infante in the Alps was also a Bourbon:

Louis François de Bourbon, or Louis François I, Prince of Conti (13 August 1717 – 2 August 1776), was a French nobleman who became the Prince of Contifrom 1727 to his death, succeeding his father, Louis Armand II de Bourbon. His mother was Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon, the daughter of Louis III, Prince of Condéand Louise Françoise de Bourbon, a legitimised daughter of King Louis XIV. His younger sister, Louise Henriette de Bourbon, was the mother of Philippe Égalité. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince du Sang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fran%C3%A7ois,_Prince_of_Conti As far as I know he was no relation to Tom or Nina.

Glad that's cleared everything up.

I'll deal with the House of Savoy (i.e. the Piedmontese/Kingdon of Sardinia) another day. After that I'll explain the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Po Valley Campaign - the Second Battle of Parma, 1742

The campaign finally kicked off today. The King of Sardinia with his Piedmontese army swiftly advanced on Ivrea to the north of Turin, on hearing of the combined Franco-Spanish army climbing the Alpine passes. Meanwhile the other Spanish army led by Montemar started crossing the Apennines on the route to Parma. The Bourbons (Spanish and allies) hoped to perform a two-pronged advance on Parma: Montemar from the south and the King of Naples and the small Modenese force under Francesco d'Este came from the east.

The cunning General Traun with his Austrian army based in Milan forestalled the Bourbons and arrived at Parma first. The Neapolitans and Modenese advanced slowly so as not to get caught by the stronger Austrian force. Montemar moved around Parma and attacked the Austrians from the north, hoping the King of Naples et al would arrive soon to back him up. The 30,000 Austrians turned to face Montemar (less than 23,000) who found he had to spend the first couple of hours on his own. [I diced to see whether the Italians would arrive for the start of the battle (no!) and then during the game from turn 7 on].

The situation after 2 map turns

I used the map for the actual Battle of Parma, 1734, where the Austrians faced the Franco-Piedmontese. The two opponents were placed roughly where the historical forces were (read Spanish for Franco-Piedmontese). Blogger is playing up and won't let me load the historic map for Parma, but the following are photos taken during the game played this evening.

Spanish to the north of the Piacenza road (E-W) and north east of the Cremona road (SE-NW). I've used 'earthworks' to denote the road is raised. 

The field is rather cramped with streams and rows of trees marking small tracks and field boundaries. No crops shown as it's early April. The Austrians outnumber the Spanish 6:1 in cavalry (all the Austrian cavalry are to the south east). The Spanish had a slight advantage in numbers of infantry and better quality with 12 battalions of guards. The Austrians had the upper hand in artillery.

The Austrians

The Spanish. Guards and cavalry on the right. The plan was to refuse this flank and attack in the centre through the farms and village of Crocetta (top left)

Battle is joined. The Spanish have seized Crocetta. The two sides would fight for hours around this area with musket and bayonet in a slow attritional struggle.

The city of Parma behind its walls to the east of the battlefield.

Finally the King of Naples arrives with his contingent in turn 10 (c 2 1/2 hours after the battle started). 

The King's arrival with 10,000 men evened up the numbers. Also marching to the sound of the guns is d'Este and the 5,000 Modenese. It would be a few more turns before they arrived, and tipped the numbers in favour of the Bourbon cause.

The end of a slow attritional battle. 

The Spanish in the Crocetta area had resisted manfully until the Austrians brought their heavy guns to bear and tipped the balance. Even then it was several turns before they were turfed out. On the left the Spanish almost turned the Habsburg position. Centre right saw a very lengthy firefight between the Spanish guards and the Austrian line infantry. Losses slowly mounted on both sides and the Spanish gradually retired to avoid being flanked by the Austrian cavalry. Talking of cavalry, other sides were underwhelming. The trees hindering movement and even then there were several refusals to charge by both sides. After 20 turns I called it a day. A slight advantage to the Austrians tactically and in terms of losses. But strategically they have failed to force the Habsburgs away from Parma. They cannot besiege the city under these circumstances. What will happen next?

Close up of the right centre at the end. Spanish nearer to the camera.

Post game thoughts.

Well that was quick to get to a battle! Which is what most wargamers want. I had to add a couple of rules to the campaign. I hadn't through the sequencing enough but that's the beauty of solo play. Gap plugged so that's an improvement!

During the battle I was highly conscious of the need to live to fight another day. Montemar had got himself in a bit of a pickle in the first place, but as this was almost exclusively an infantry battle things didn't work out too badly. I called it at 20 turns rather than wait to one side or the other to start to lose 'wings' in the normal Twilight of the Soldier Kings way. I thought it more realistic for the Spanish to disengage as they were closer to breaking. I also remembered I needed to add a rule for post-battle recovery of losses and imported one from another set. Basically because neither side had really chased the other from the field, and there was no pursuit, I gave each side an equal chance of recovering losses. The Habsburgs did better in this respect so the overall numbers left will be closer.

The next challenge is to decide who does what after the battle. There are no easy options for either side. And then there is the question of what the Gallispans coming from the Alps are to do faced with a Piedmontese army almost as big as theirs sitting under the guns of a fortress. Would a retreat back the way they came and debouch into Piedmont from one of the other passes be the best option?

More on the Po Campaign Rules

Following on from the last post, I organised the lettered beads into coloured groups, each representing 1 of seven 'factions'. Each commander (between 1 and 6 general officers per faction) had his own lettered bead and a duplicate goes in the 'activation hat'. Thus forces will be activated randomly each turn.

The seven factions are in two main camps:

Austrians and their Piedmontese allies (with occasional British involvement/interference);

Bourbons: Spanish, French, Neapolitans,  and their friends in Modena and Genoa.

I reviewed the 'guideline' rules I'd sketched out a couple of months ago. And they were rather sketchy, based on a couple of hex-mapped campaigns I did for the War of the Austrian Succession. So I spent quite a lot of time honing these into something more usable and considerably tightened up. Tightened up is a relative term here; bearing in mind this is for a solo game, the rules wouldn't pass muster for a competitive game. They still don't cover 5 pages in Arial font size 12.

The rules cover:

• Unit Types
• Activation
• Movement
• Supply
• Replenishment
• Battle
• Sieges
• Events
• Victory Conditions

In addition I have: a turn tracker (a turn now being a week and not a day!); orders of battle; table of commanders; and will have a schedule of towns and who controls them.

Here are a few samples of rules:

Sieges are abstracted, but I might try the Siege Works rules for a bit more fun, time permitting. 

There are 12 random events that can be diced for each month (April-November) with 5 favouring the Austro-Piedmontese, 5 favouring the Bourbons and 2 neutral. Amongst the neutral events is the interdiction of a Supply Train by Pandours - unless it is countered by an Escort! Some events can only happen once, e.g. the death of Felipe V, for obvious reasons. Nearly all the Events are based on real occurrences so they are not so out there that they are not plausible. However, it's just occurred to me that I omitted one that could have happened with all these troops marching around the country - Plague!

Ultimately Victory is going to be about capturing and holding Fortresses. The rival dynasties, Habsburg, Bourbon and Savoy, have got expansionist aims. How very modern! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's all gone quiet over here!

 ...to coin a taunting football chant. It's been over 5 weeks since my last post and no dice have been rolled in anger. No paint brushes have been lifted either. My Italian AWS campaign stopped before it started. I called a halt initially at the end of January because I had a spell of busyness (i.e. a couple of longish drives to watch football, amongst other things). Then I realised that I didn't have enough lettered 'beads' which I was intending to use as tokens to mark competing forces on the map - under my scheme I would have 2 beads for each force (1 for the map and 1 for the 'magical activation bucket') x half a dozen 'factions' x however many forces each faction divided itself up between. Whilst I prevaricated over this, a trip up to Cleethorpes to watch Grimsby exit the FA Cup at the hands of Wolves* used up more time and energy than I had to spare. Then followed by a week's trip to Spain during which I became ill - nothing serious, but it left me blown out and too tired to do much after work for my first week back.

* For the benefit of non-UK readers, this refers to Wolverhampton Wanderers, an Association football club, not a pack of canine animals of that name. For the initiated, Wolves appeared more like a tribute act for Wycombe Wanderers (Adebayo Akinfenwa vintage) than the Old Gold heroes of the past. The players' physical stature and their method of play looked more like a League One side than a Championship-bound Premier League team. But as a League One side they were too good for League Two Grimsby. The best team won.

Had I got my act together before going to Spain I could have taken my map and bits and pieces and at least played out some initial map moves and play-tested my scheme. Thinking about this I had the idea of Having some 'block armies' out there to play tactical games during quiet evenings.

So this evening after work I checked the range of products in Flying Tiger Copenhagen and the closing time of the local branch. Bingo! They had what I wanted and were open until 7pm so I made use of my old folks' bus pass to flit down there.

What I went for

What I also came back with - these come in 2 lengths: 9cm and 15cm

And I also came back with these. The 'Jenga style' blocks suitably re-styled will be the basis for the 'wargame armies in exile'. 

In theory I could leave the blocks unaltered as they come in 6 different colours, but the pastel shades are somewhat 'unmilitary' to my mind. The measurements are 7.5x2.5x1.5 cm - longer than I would have liked, but they'll do.

The other box looks like a 'Mastermind-style' game. Handy in itself, but I have a vague notion of using it as some sort of tracker (like Charles Wesencraft's weather tracker).

There was one piece of tangentially 'wargame-related' activity on Friday. I met up with David-in-Suffolk at the National Army Museum for a lunchtime talk on the training regime of the British, Dominion and Empire troops in the Second World War. Not my core area of interest by any means, but these things are always informative and it's always good to catch up with young David.

Campaign Delay / Reading Matters

Despite my best intentions (paving the way to Hell) I didn’t start the Po valley campaign whilst the Margravina was away visiting her ancestral lands. By the Friday I needed a bit of downtime after a busy week. Saturday was taken up with a trek to Cheltenham to see the Mighty Mariners extend their winning streak, and then Tuesday evening saw a similar trip to Colchester with a similar outcome. Both tiring trips by car. Especially the first one as it involved driving back across country in the dark, through narrow, pot-holed lanes, and a long tailback when traffic heading eastwards met a lorry coming the other way with no room to pass.

I fleshed the campaign map out. Still have a few towns to name.

I haven’t been totally inactive on the hobby front though. Santa bought me a few books and I’ve gradually been working my way through them.

Been thinking about getting this for a while. Currently onto the last couple of chapters. Bit of myth busting in it.

Contents for the above.

This was enjoyable. Almost tempted me into a campaign

Couple of booklet sized publications in the waiting pile.

Last but not least, I bought myself this when I discovered the disappearance of an Italian website that had much of this information, and more.

Some of the militia units look interesting, and were pretty effective in some cases. If you fancy a walk on the wild side of the 18th century, some small wars action in the Alps could be engaging.

Lots of lovely plates like this.