Montmirail 1814

Last night we played Valour & Fortitude. Ralph set up a scenario based around part of the battle of  Montmirail in 1814. The French have driven off a Russian corps, but their pursuit in intercepted by some angry Prussians and a couple of brigades of Russian cavalry. The French are mostly guard - Old, Young and Something In Between. Here's the setup, with the French top-right Prussians bottom left and Russian cavalry bottom right.  The objectives were a simple old-fashioned 'Destroy Enemy Units'.

Prussians. 

The Russian cavalry. I got given command of these because that's what happens when there's a big cavalry command. To the left are dragoons. The smart massed lancers to the right are, in fact, Cossacks and not as good as they look. 

Still, the Cossacks do have a special 'hit and run' attack which allows them to ignore ordinary combat factors and simply fight on a single die roll but with limited damage on both sides. This meant I could pin down an enemy command and hope to whittle them down. So that's what I decided to do. 

French Young Guard. I think. Anyway, this is what I was up against. 

An overview as both sides fanned out from their deployment zones. To the bottom right you can see teh French in squares against the Cossack hordes. At the top French cavalry advance through the woods on the Prussian flank.

More Cossacks in action. 

The French cavalry in the woods fell on the Allied left flank and looked to be dangerous, so I diverted my dragoons, swinging them across the rear of the battle. Despite the lack of photos of it there was a fair sized battle raging in the centre between the infantry and artillery of both sides. Sadly for us the French quality was winning out over the Prussian quantity. 

Soon there was a gaping hole in the Prussian centre and more French cavalry appeared. In fact there seemed to be a lot of French cavalry. 

Thanks to command inertia and generally average rolls, the Cossacks and the Young Guard actually had a quiet battle, inflicting exactly one hit on each other during the course of it. There was even time for a chat. 

My Dragoons got into position just as the Prussians reached a point that can best be described as 'Total Collapse', thus ending the game. 

There's virtually no photos showing it, but the vulgar infantry fight led to a massive French win. But then they had the wargamers' dream Napoleonic army of Guard, Guard and more Guard.

The Russian cavalry quietly slipped away.