No Saxe please, we're British

Yes, we're in Pun City, Arizona again. As Tony Webster might have said. No prizes for guessing where this is going. Naturally after reading a couple of books on the AWI and being part way through a collection of essays on the ECW*, and about to play in my 4th ACW game of the year, I'm planning a ''re-fight' of Fontenoy.**

The Protagonists

Maurice de Saxe/Moritz von Sachsen, or simply 'Mo'.

William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland. 'Gus'.

I was casting about for a solo game to try out, and briefly considered Middlewich (covered in the first essay of the book below).  Then I skimmed through a mental checklist of Frederick's battles for ones I haven't done (Hochkirch, Liegnitz, Burkersdorf), which require a thoughtful approach to scenario planning that I simply can't be bothered to work through at the moment. A nagging thought popped up at that point. I haven't blooded the redcoats that I painted last year! But which battle?

Hastenbeck was briefly considered (with said redcoats pretending to be Hanoverians). Too sprawling. Minden. Didn't appeal, but I can't think why. Fontenoy forced its way through to the forefront. The space required was compact (coming in at 120 x 120 cm with the Twilight of the Soldier Kings rules). And it's been on the to do list since I bought a copy of Charles Grant's tome on the battle 40 years ago. That's it! A veritable Old School classic Horse and Musket battle, albeit with very non-Old School figures and rules.

First step was to convert an order of battle into 'Twilight' unit terms. The main source I used was the post on Fontenoy in the Obscure Battles blog. I'll check it later against the OOB in James Falkner's book. After painstakingly lying out the composition of all the formations in a spreadsheet, I distilled it down to the following table. I ignored the battalion guns as these are 'factored' into the infantry brigades fighting strength.

	Bns/Sqs/Guns	Game units (‘Brigades’)
FRENCH
Swiss	10	2 + 1 base with Garde brigade
Irish	6	1 large (3 bases)
Total French redcoats	16	8 bases total
Gardes Francais	4	1 bde (large with Swiss). 2 Bases blue
Other infantry	48	12 brigades. Inc dismounted dragoons (3 bn worth)
Maison du Roi and Gendarmerie	15	Large squadrons. 2 Brigades.
Other cavalry	100	10 bde of which 3 arrive at 13:00. Excl dismounted dragoons
Artillery	40	4 bde. 1 at Windmill (actually off board), 1 in Fontenoy, 1 in Redoubts d’Eu and 1 in right wing redoubts. Guns in redoubts are light.
PRAGMATIC ARMY
British	20	3 large Guards bns (1 bde), 1 Highland, 16 line/fus
Hanoverian	5	1 bde + 1 bn with British
Total redcoats	25	1 Guards bde, 1 Hanoverian, 3 standard British, 1 large British. Total of 13 bases
Dutch	22	2 Gardes, 1 Grenadier, 19 line. 4 standard, 1 large brigade or 11 bases.
British Cav	26	15 dragoons, 11 Guard/Heavies. 1 large dragoon bde and 1 standard heavy.
Hanoverian Cav	20	12 dragoons, 8 heavies. 1 bde drag, 1 bde heavy
Austrian Cav	11.5	1 large brigade mostly dragoons (inc some light inf and hussars)
Dutch Cav	39	1 bde drag, 3 bde heavy
Artillery	28	2 large bdes (1 Brit, 1 Dutch)

Amongst the stuff I need to look at is how I deal with the redoubts. There were five in total, each with a handful of light guns and a total of about 4 battalions. There are insufficient numbers of pieces (and infantry) in any one redoubt to treat as 'brigades' in Twilight of the Soldier Kings terms. I could look at making these all 'tiny' units (i.e. they suffer deductions in combat). If I simply reduce the number of redoubts (like Charles Grant did), then I would create more open space in the French lines which makes it slightly easier for the allies.

The next thing would be to decide on troop and general ratings and how many subordinate commanders to allocate to each side. Whilst he came up with a great position in the first place, Saxe was relatively immobile, so should I give him a higher rating than Cumberland on the day? Most units will be standard class with the exception of the Guards brigades on both sides. British might be given a higher fire rating than the French, but otherwise the same class as the French. I don't think there's any reason for making the Swiss or Irish better than the French line. The book I recently read on the Irish Brigade tended towards a revisionist approach on the Irish. If I treat it as one Large Brigade it will be much more resilient anyway. The same with the Dutch. There doesn't seem to be anything which suggest they should be downgraded as units. The problem (despite the Anglocentric historiographical tradition) seems to rest more with the leadership at the top level. If I remember Falkner correctly, the fault behind the Dutch 'underperformance' rests with a lack of co-ordination between their wing and the British.

Before all this though, I have a feeling I might not have enough redcoats. For both sides. I'll need to do a physical count of what's in the boxes. I have about a brigade's worth of painted, but unbased French, and two brigade's of totally unpainted infantry in the lead pile. So more than enough for any shortfall.

Oh, there'll be a fair amount of 'standing in for' in this. Austrians will stand in for the Dutch and Hanoverian cavalry and Prussians will be acting as the Dutch infantry. I've been toying around with the idea of building a Dutch army having both volumes of For Orange and the States handy. But I'm practising 'fiscal rectitude' for the time-being.

* No Sex Please, We're British was a comedic play and film from the early 70s.

** In fairness, I did devour THE ARMY OF GEORGE II 1727-1760, The Soldiers who Forged an Empire and MORE FURIES THAN MEN, The Irish Brigade in the Service of France 1690-1792 fairly recently too.

** NEW APPROACHES TO THE MILITARY HISTORY OF ENGLISH CIVIL WAR Proceedings of the First Helion & Company. ‘Century of the Soldier’ Conference. Edited by Ismini Pells.