Came across this item in my news feed today. It’s an interesting blog for a geek like me based in the metropolis
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/st-matthias-londons-only-interregnum-church-56729/
One strand I often get pinged about are Ian’s visits to London alleys!
I'm still working on the Rossbach scenario. I'm trying to figure out how many turns I should allow. There is no direct link between turns and time in Twilight of the Soldier Kings. So I calculated the distances the troops moved and the approximate timings known from accounts, and then work back an average number of turns per hour. There's quite a bit of chopping and changing going on. I'm nearly there. Then I've got to finalise victory conditions. As mentioned in the last post, I'm trying to get the scenario to run on roughly historical lines. Twilight of the Soldier Kings has a default victory mechanism based on wing and army morale tests, rather than the Victory Point approach taken by games like C&C. I'm trying to work out whether I can blend the two approaches.
Went for a walk this evening in Richmond Park. Not been there much lately. Something to do with painting a French army. Did a spot of impromptu brambling. No container so I had to eat what I picked. The berries are small but sweet. Brambles, by the way, is an English (or British?) name for blackberries.
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| The fern is dying off early this year. |
The state of the plants is quite a shock. Leaves everywhere are shrivelled or droopy. The grass is brown/yellow. We walked up to Pen Ponds (a couple of artificial lakes created by damming streams that run through to the Beverley Brook. A sign of how bad things have got is the fact these ladies were in the top pond having a drink.
I've never seen them near the ponds let alone in them (though what they get up to after the park closes is a mystery to me). There are lots of small ponds that wouldn't be oversized for a garden, and little brooks or ditches where they normally drink. Presumably a lot of them are dry now. The big ponds themselves are also showing signs of drying up. There was a party of people sat on a little 'beach' that is normally under water. I have not seen this here before.
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| Those tall grasses in the background are normally in the water. A drop of several inches of height of the water level. |
It's still a beautiful place.
Always something new to see.
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| Some sort of hawk? |
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| It didn't stay for a closer shot. Managed to catch it as it flew past, though not much more than a blur. |
OK. So this is one of the major Frederician battles I have never gamed in any form. It is one of a pair of his most famous victories (both within a month of each other), so why haven't I gamed it before?
Well, it is simply difficult to stage. Not because of the size - the numbers were relatively modest. What makes it difficult is the scenario. If played from the beginning of the day, with a 2 to 1 advantage, even with a quality difference, it looks daunting if you're the Prussian. And it wouldn't really be Rossbach if it was straight fight. If you play the game from the time of the Prussian attack, then already the game is pretty much over as a contest. In naval terms, the Prussians crossed the Franco-Imperialist 'T'. Caught them end on. Enfiladed. So you wouldn't want to be the Franco-Imperialist side. It's one of those battles where, you wouldn't do what they did if you knew what happened. You'd have to have some very cleverly contrived victory conditions to encourage something close to historical behaviour. Maybe add some victory points for the possession of the Janus Hill (see below). Obviously it helps playing solo, as then you win when you lose 😉.
Rossbach was the first of a pair of battles in 1757 in which Frederick II of Prussia pulled his chestnuts well and truly from the fire. After the Spring invasion of Bohemia, which culminated in the Battle of Prague, the Prussians were defeated at Kolin by the Austrians, and then forced back over the border into Saxony. As well as coming under attack in the Bohemian-Saxony theatre, the Prussians were under threat of further Austrian pressure in Silesia, and now the Russian horde was on the march in East Prussia. To cap it all, the Imperial Diet had declared Frederick's invasions of Saxony and Bohemia to be illegal and a call went out to raise a Reichsexekutionsarmee. In addition, the French had sent an expeditionary force into Germany threatening Frederick's western flank (and the British king's Hanoverian possessions).
The larger part of the French army confronted the Duke of Cumberland in north-western Germany. A smaller French force set-out to join up with an Imperial army in central Germany to threaten the Prussian position in Saxony. Through the late Summer Frederick played a cat and mouse game with the French in the western Saxon region. As soon as the King showed his face, the French would withdraw. When his back was turned (to counter the against the Austrians in the Silesian theatre) the French stuck their noses out again. In conjunction with the Imperial or Reichsarmee.
The Reichsarmee was a conglomeration of all the states of the Holy Roman Empire. About 2,000 of them. Well some of them. It excluded Brandenburg (Prussia), Austria and Bohemia (though Austria leant some cavalry units and light troops), Hanover and some other Protestant states allied to Britain and Prussia. Saxony was knocked out of the reckoning by the Prussians in 1756. What remained were mainly small states - some contributing company or battalion sized units - some good, some indifferent and some downright poor. What really hampered the Reichsarmee was the fact it was drawn from so many small states - some regiments were made up of contributions from many statelets who had not served together for a generation or more. The infantry regiment of Baden-Baden was made up of 42 contingents, and the Hohenzollern cuirassier regiment was made up of 61! Another extreme example: the Abbess of Guckenzell was responsible for raising three and a third infantrymen and one-third of a cavalryman. There was no collective peacetime training, only drills and displays in the individual states. Equipment was often dragged from stores in a mouldy, rotten or rusty condition. Quite simply they were, as a whole, not ready for war.
By late October, Frederick had rushed back to Saxony to deal with the French and the Reichsarmee once and for all. And by then, the combined French and Imperial command had grown in confidence. After all, they outnumbered the Prussians 2:1. After a bit more boxing and coxing, the rival hosts ended up camping close to each other on 4th November 1757, near the town of Freyburg. The following morning after a conference, the Allied leaders decided to march their army to the south, closing the route to their line of communication through Freyburg. Seeing the Prussians remaining fixed in their camp, the Franco-Imperialists turned to the east at the village of Zeuchfeld, and continued their march on a route that would bring them due south of the Prussians' position, threatening their flank. Around here the allied columns became mixed up, with the foot and artillery in five bunched columns on platoon frontages, and the cavalry out in front. The Prince of Sachsen-Hildburgausen, in command of the Imperialists and notionally the senior of the two allied commanders, saw an opportunity to get across the Prussians line of communications and urged his French allies to press on. After initial resistance, Soubise in command of the French agreed.
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| Table size superimposed on map from Duffy's Prussia's Glory: Rossbach and Leuthen 1757. I'll maybe kick off from when the allies have begun their march. The scale is wrong on this map, by the way. The scale should show 2 miles (or km) not 4. I checked against other maps and the current satellite map of the area. |
At this point the Prussian king finally accepted the entreaties of his senior officers to respond. Orders were issued and the Prussian tents were quickly packed away and the whole army began an eastward march in parallel to the enemy. Observing that the Prussians were countering his intentions, Hildburghausen urged a faster pace and the cavalry spurred on a ahead. The Prussian horse, also in the van, riding quicker than the Allies, rounded the Janus Hill, and formed up at the crest. From there they charged the slightly disorganised Imperialists, and after a hard fight routed them and then followed up and dished out the same treatment to the French cavalry.
Meanwhile the Prussian infantry wheeled southwards in one extended line. With heavy guns firing overhead, they swung, in Duffy's words, 'like a closing door' onto the on-coming columns of French and Imperialist infantry. By now, the Prussian cavalry had reformed on the southern flank of the hapless foe, and delivered the charge that finally broke the enemy infantry. The carnage was immense. To the Prussian 500 dead and wounded, the allies could count 5,000 dead and wounded and 5,000 prisoners. The allied army was effectively out of the campaign for many months, and Fritz was free to march the core of his army back to Silesia for a showdown with the Austrians.
Next post, a bit more on the planned game. Orders of battle and some thoughts on the scenario victory conditions.
The French are finished.....
The last touches applied today.
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| Bases 'textured' with fine sand, coated with burnt umber, then 3 levels of dry brushed highlights. The black chaps with black bases are surplus to current requirements, but will make an appearance in Phase 2. |
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| Le grand homme et son entourage. |
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| l'infanterie. Finished with a sprinkle of flock. |
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| Generals et cavalerie. The chaps are ensconced in their Ferrero Rocher boxes lined with magnetic sheet. Good job I had the foresight to scoff a lot of the Ambassador's favourite treat months ago because the price has soared. I have a couple left I think, which might just be enough for Phase 2. |
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| Les dragons et l'artillerie (et un canon, erm, squashé par un géant clumsy). |
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| I'd omitted the hat lace on the cavalry, but seeing Jon's recent post jogged my memory. |
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| Heavy cavalry in the foreground, dragoons in the background. I've gone for dragoons in 'bedcaps' because that seems, well, more like French dragoons to me. It also breaks up the rows and rows of tricorns. These were from the H&R Marlburian range. |
Another of those peanut butter and jam posts I keep reading about!
I’ve made solid progress with painting my French. I reckon I’m about half way through them now. It’s taken me somewhere in the region of 13-14 hours. I still have the following steps to take:
Artillery cuffs & turnbacks
Cavalry cuffs & some saddlecloths
Cavalry breast plates & swords
Horses - main coat colour where not black, blazes etc
Infantry cross belts
Infantry barrels and bayonets
Some grenadier bearskin bags*
Flags (have to be painted!)
Basing and texturing
Touching up
General staff - 14 figures undercoated but otherwise untouched
Half brigade of cavalry - 10 figures, ditto
I might be ready to get them in the table for a game by the first weekend of August.
This will give me 11.5 brigades of infantry, 8.5 of cavalry, 6 of artillery and 5 stands of staff. Each horse/foot/gun brigade is two bases. I’m half a brigade short of what I need for Rossbach due to a miscalculation. I prefer to order the shortfall when I place the next order rather than ordering them on their own. So I will slip a base of Austrians in.
The good news for me is that I’m not massively short of the additional figures needed for Minden and Fontenoy. I received the figures I need from Irregular that I can’t get from H&R (dismounted dragoons for the French and horse grenadiers in mitres for the Brits/Hanoverians). A point to note here is that I am not being totally faithful to the uniforms of units in the respective orbats though. I’ll have roughly the right proportions of white, blue and red-coats in the French armies, but what will be Irish and Gardes Suisses in one battle will be Swiss line in another (Red); and Gardes Francaises at Fontenoy will be German regiments in the SYW (blue). Gives me a conundrum with the flags though.
Sorry I forgot to take any snaps of the WIP. I’ll try to remember tomorrow.
* I’ve gone for the partially anachronistic choice of bearskin capped grenadiers. These didn’t become common until 1759, but I like em. Prior to that, they were nearly all in tricorns. I mean, make an effort to look like proper grenadiers Frenchies! The other reason I’m doing them in bearskins is because of the Blandford SYW book that we consulted in our school wargame group. That showed a moustachioed grenadier of the Swiss Regiment de Diesbach in bearskin in the section on Rossbach. One of our number drew the understandable conclusion that it was a whole regiment of grenadiers, rather than it just being the flank company. So it is in his honour I have rejected the more historical tricorn.
It seems that there’s a fair amount of scepticism about progress, especially coming from some of the other 5i partner countries 😉. So I present here for your eyes, some evidence of peanut butter and, if not jelly, st least the promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ (to mix the metaphors).
A general view of 7 brigades’ worth of infantry. 3 French; 1 German; 3 Swiss/Irish. They’ll look better when the black from the sprayed undercoat on the bases is covered up.
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Next up the cavalry, guns and remaining infantry.
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| Anyone seen a field gun lying around? Somehow one has broken free of its PVA bonding and has gone wheel about. I need to lighten up some of those horses. |
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| 20 packs worth of metal from Heroics and Ros |
