A Battle for Bridges

The Austrians attempted a river crossing at two points, approximately 3 miles apart. The French got wind of the strategic movement and redirected all available elements to the crossing points. Lannes’s provisional corps moved against the southern crossing point while Vandamme moved his brigades against the northern crossing.

The game ran approximately three hours and featured figures from our new ESR Napoleonics Box Sets.

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Hohenlohe detected Lannes’s advance and moved his grenadier division into the small town to protect the crossing point. Eventually he supported these with a division of line infantry. Lannes made repeated pushes against the bridge with Demont’s division but wasn’t able to maintain a momentary breakthrough. Without adequate artillery support available, the efforts against the southern crossing failed and St. Germain’s cuirassier division sat patiently for another day.

At the northern crossing, Hiller pushed across the river with his avant garde and a brigade of hussars. These were quickly met by Vandamme’s lead elements. Vandamme had only two brigades of infantry with him but was able to bottle up the Austrians in town, preventing their superior numbers from overwhelming him. While the Austrian avant garde made gains on their left, they had no support as the hussars were seriously fatigued after the opening actions. Without being able to breakout of the town, Hiller’s line division slowly lost ground to the French and would have to fall back across the river.