Rather like Bernard Cornwell discovering a Sunday afternoon in Richard Sharpe’s life he has not accounted for, and turning it into two novels and a short story, we launch ourselves into the further north German adventures of Generals Lebasque and von Wreckedoffen with a Sharp Practice doubleheader.
When camping here in Ontario, the biggest risks to a good night’s sleep are the local wildlife checking to see if you have left any of your food unsecured, or the kids at the next pitch over deciding to stay up all night partying. For Lebasque’s scouting force, fresh from their success at Dreibrücke, their sleep is interrupted by those most unexpected of visitors, Prussians seeking revenge.
Having foolishly camped by the sole bridge over an unfordable stream, the French line of retreat is constrained. Their only hope is that the Prussians are spotted before they get too close to the sleeping grognards.
Following Grant’s scenario, the Prussians split into two forces, one entering from A, and the other from B. A d6 is rolled to determine their turn of entry, with Turn 3 being dawn, when the French cavalry pickets will be able to spot them.
Once spotted, the pickets will ride to the camp to raise the alarm (I add the light cavalry officer’s card to the deck for this turn). Once a picket reaches the camp, the card for the officer they contact is added to the deck, and he can activate a number of groups under his command equal to his command initiative. In the next turn the cards for officers adjacent to him are added as the alarm ripples out through the camp. One command card is added to the deck for each officer alerted (apart from the junior fusilier officer). To represent the confusion of rudely awakened soldiers, each group activated will receive one average dice of Shock.
The forces are:
Prussian (Red)
Group A
French (Blue)
4 Groups Fusiliers, Leader Status III, Leader Status I
1 Group Grenadiers, Leader Status II
1 Group Voltigeurs, Leader Status II
2 Groups Dragoons, Leader Status III
1 Group Chasseurs à Cheval, Leader Status II, musician
2 light guns with crew and limbers Leader Status I
As last time, the French have a lot of high quality leaders to balance the poor quality of their troops compared to the Prussians. Prussians get 5 Command Cards, the French have 6. Rolling for Force Morale puts the confident, but comatose, French at 11 with the Prussians showing the effects of a sleepless night on the march at 10.
Having rolled for Prussian Group A to enter on Turn 2 and Group B on Turn 4, we begin Turn 3 with the table looking like this:
As the sun rose, the western French pickets saw the column of Prussian musketeers and headed for camp to wake their sleeping comrades. After a slightly slow start in their first turn, the Prussians picked up the pace a bit and made good time along the road with the artillery close behind.
On Turn 4 the second Prussian column joined the fray. The dragoons entered along the road, and used a bonus activation to charge the French picket, wiping them out before they could raise the alarm, but suffering a casualty in the process. The hussars and jaegers deployed south of the road, making for the camp as fast as possible. An inopportune ‘Tiffin’ card might have prevented any French response, but luckily they had a Command Card which allowed the surviving pickets to continue their ride for camp, with the first to arrive managing to rouse the artillery officer.
In Turn 5 all the surviving French pickets reached the camp, waking both fusilier officers and the voltigeurs leader, with the artillery officer activating the first of his guns. Meanwhile both Prussian columns continued to close in on the camp, with the gun in the west unlimbering and beginning to load, while the musketeers drew themselves up in line north of the French position.
Yet Turn 6 did not go quite to plan for the Prussians. The jaegers fired on the chasseurs à cheval pickets who had formed up into a group, but only inflicted 2 shock, the same as the gun achieved when it fired canister at the French gun. Worst of all, the hussars decided to charge into the tents where there was still no sign of movement, and were confronted by bleary eyed, but aggressive grenadiers. Despite having unloaded muskets, the French infantry managed to inflict 4 kills to the Prussians’ 2 and drove them off, thereby reinforcing the reputation of hussars for being all mouth and (tight) trousers. As the second French gun and a fusilier group were activated, it fell to the dragoons to rescue Prussian fortunes as they charged into the chasseurs and wiped them out, dropping French Force Morale to 8, compared to the Prussians now at 9.
The Prussian dragoons carried their momentum into Turn 7 and piled into a fusilier group, wiping them out, wounding the officer and costing the French another 2 Force Morale points, again for only one casualty. But retribution was swift. Fresh from driving off the hussars at bayonet point, the grenadiers loaded their muskets (no ‘First Fire’ bonuses for the French in this scenario) and unleashed a volley into the dragoons’ flank, killing 3 and inflicting 4 shock, enough to break them.
With all the remaining fusiliers awake, and both guns limbered, things seemed to be turning in the French’s favour, despite the dragoons being still apparently fast asleep. But then the Prussian musketeers unleashed a controlled volley on the fusiliers, inflicting 4 kills and 13 shock as well as wounding the other officer and forcing both groups to withdraw.
From then on, the French morning went from bad to worse. In Turn 8 rifle fire from the jaegers broke the 'cavalry killer' grenadiers and they fled for the bridge, a blast of canister from the Prussian gun wiped out the voltigeurs and with Force Morale dropping to 2, the fact that the dragoons finally rolled out of bed seemed definitely too little too late. An early Tiffin card brought Turn 9 to an abrupt end, but not before the surviving grenadiers had escaped across the bridge.
Dragoons, the sullen teenagers of la Grande Armée, apparently.
The French tried desperately to pull things together in Turn 10 but to no avail. Both guns made it as far as the bridge, but the dragoon officer's card remained welded to the bottom of the deck, and when the Prussian musketeers unleashed a second volley into the fusiliers, causing 6 kills and 11 shock, it broke 2 groups and took French Force Morale below zero.
Some of those fleeing fusiliers may have escaped over the bridge, but it was pretty jammed up with artillery horses and limbers, so most will have tried their luck swimming the river or accepted capture by the Prussians. Regardless, it was a comprehensive victory for the Germans, a worthy revenge for the disaster at Dreibrücke.
Concluding thoughts
After more than a year of nothing, it was just a pleasure to finally be pushing lead around again. I am, no doubt, a bit rusty, so there might have been some more sophisticated things I could have done with the French command cards to get them deployed earlier. More likely, my set-up was just too harsh and the French would always struggle. That said, the grenadiers showed what even a single group, with shock and unloaded muskets, could achieve. If the dragoon leader's card had shown up just a little earlier, who knows what might have happened.
Hopefully, I will get to play the next scenario, another Sharp Practice game, before I forget it all again. No promises, 2025 still looks as grim as 2024, the big difference being that I actually played a game already this year!
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