Thunder on the Danube

 

As faithful podcast listeners know, I am in a second Play By E-Mail (PBEM) campaign hosted by Wendy. And as everyone, including my opponents know, I am commanding the Bavarian army, which formed Napoleon's VII Corps. 

I will endeavor to keep this updated more frequently. 

Theater of campaign

This time I dutifully read my briefing and spent the week pondering my initial deployment. My analysis, as I outlined to Napoleon's HQ, was that the threat to Davout around Ratisbonne was greater than the threat to Munich. So I deployed my infantry divisions to cover the three northern crossings, while the cavalry screened to the south and burned bridges.

Initial deployment 16 April 1809

The first communication from the Emperor, which fortunately arrived at 8 am on the first day of game time, promptly turned this upside down. "Defend Munich!" were the orders. And he outlined a  grand strategy of crossing at Munich and taking the Austrians in their left flank.

Gallopers are thus dispatched hither and yon, and the closest divisions begin marching immediately, or noonish, allowing time for orders to arrive, camps to be struck etc. 

Moves afternoon of 16 April 

Because my divisions were scattered, my control over them was not immediate. I sent orders for the next two days. My map skills told me that 12 hour marches on the 17th would get me to here:

Ordered movements for 17 April 

The Cavalry Division should be at Landshut to cover my northern flank. 1st Div also at Landshut en route to Moosburg. 2nd Division at Moosburg en route to Freising. And 3rd Division about a 4 hour march from Munich. 

That was the carefully thought out plan, at any rate.

A turn or so later, I am informed that 3rd Division at Landshut,  has been threatened by at least a Corps since 6 am. More gallopers are dispatched. Everyone is told: "Move. Move now!" I don't expect to stop the crossing, but if 3rd Division can delay and then retire towards me, that'd be great. Then I'll have all 3 infantry divisions together threatening the Austrian flank. 

Hopefully, the cavalry division can circle around the Austrian bridgehead and join me by the 18th.

I'm getting reports from cavalry patrols all day (stalwart chaps those Bavarian troopers) of large Austrian columns crossing at Moosburg and Freising.

But 3rd Divisions holds out heroically at Landshut and I reinforce them with 2nd Division as evening falls on the 16th. "Super!" I think.

The 17th dawns quietly only to find that a Corps of whitecoats have marched up from the Moosburg crossing.

Well poop.

Not liking the idea of fighting in two directions with 1 fresh division, 1 not-so-fresh division and some cavalry that have forced march through the night, dodging Austrian cavalry vedettes, I elect to retire north east to link up with 1st Division.

I manage to extricate myself, thanks to Imperial troops marching twice as fast as the Austrians and I get all four of my divisions together on that unnamed Y-junction just to my north east. The Austrians pursued. I elected to "fight a delaying action" which forces the enemy to deploy and then while they regroup I'm getting out of there. Stupidly I designated my cavalry as rearguard, thinking their horses would allow them to elude the whitecoats easily. 

Being exhausted and attacked by Austrian heavies, they broke and galloped up the Isar river like a pack of panicked sheep. I took the rest north towards Ratisbonne and Davout, fighting a second delaying action around Neufahrn as I went. I then stopped at Eggmuhl and sent staff officers to gather in my cavalry. They finally arrived in the small hours of the morning and needed 24 hours rest to be ready to fight again.

So I spent the next campaign day, at 2 hour weekly turns, sitting at Eggmuhl, patrolling south, east and west while my cavalry recovered from their fit of vapours. I was briefly menaced by some Cuirassiers and Grenadiers, who then sloped off westward after making rude gestures at my pickets. 

All this day I'm getting no dispatches from Davout or Imperial HQ or anyone and I'm just alone in the dark wondering where the war went to. Late in the day I heard some artillery fire from around Abensberg as Vandamme, and possibly Davout, set about thrashing the Austrian 2nd Korps.

After 24 hours of sitting on my hands, I decide "Right well, since everyone seems to have forgotten me, I'll push south to Landshut and try to get in behind the Austrians!" After four hours of marching I bump some Austrians.

So I sit and wait, figuring I'm at least keeping these divisions from heading north west to the big fight around Abensburg. I finally get some messages as well. Vandamme and Davout are going to be pushing the Austrians towards Landshut and can I be ready to pounce?

Morning of the 20th I attack a Division of Cuirassiers and a Division of Grenadiers guarding the Landshut bridge.

North

Cavalry

Lefebvre

1er Div west	2e Div center	3e Div east
west	center Cuirassier Lichtenstein	east Grenadiers

South

I had assumed that they'd do a fighting withdrawal, so ordered "Attack!" Well, the white coats stood and bloodied 2nd and 3rd divisions until 1st and the cavalry outflanked them. Then they withdrew in good order over the bridge. In retrospect, I should have defended with 2nd and 3rd while attacking on my right to outflank them.

Meanwhile I've been hearing a lot of artillery fire to my north and west the past day or two. Massena and Davout got themselves into hot water but only the faster march rate of the French got them out of it. Massena calls for aid, but I've got a tiger by the tail so to speak, with 1st Reserve Korps bottled up on the south side of the Iser River now. I march to Massena and all those Austrian elite troops will just follow me.

Bit of an embuggerance, really.

Oudinot is down river at Moosburg, but my latest intelligence had the Austrians still holding the river crossing at Freising, so my cutting their LOC isn't much help.

While reorganizing and trying to figure out what happened to Vandamme, who was supposed to be coming down the Rottenburg road, Oudinot with the tattered remains of his II Corps, amounting to a worn out cavalry division straggles in, along with reports from my cavalry screen that a large Austrian force is coming from my north where Vandamme was supposed to be, while the 1st Reserve Corps is getting ready to attack across the bridge again.

Bugger.

So much for keeping the Austrian elites bottled up on the wrong side of the Iser and out of the fight.

Oudinot and I are close enough we can message instantly, so we hatch some plans and bugger off. Oudinot acting as rearguard and retiring to Postau. I march back the way I came towards Eggmuhl.

At Eggolsheim, just south of Ratisbonne, I encounter the Wurttemberg cavalry division who are pretty beat up having been driven off from the main battle raging around Rohn and Rottenberg. I camp with them and ponder my options. Communications with Imperial HQ being somewhat awkward, what with all those very pretty Austrian hussars swanning  about, drinking wine, seducing the women, and intercepting dispatches, between me and Napoleon.

I have a few ideas in mind. 

Either I could swing west to join the main army around Abensberg, but that would take a couple of days marching. Or I could dash south east, cross the Iser, and strike the Austrians from their southern flank. Again that would take a few days. Third choice is to rest for a day and strike south again at Landshut, hoping to at least draw off some Austrian reserves from the main event happening loudly only 20 kilometers to my west. I even calculated how long it would take to go cross country and fall on the Austrian rear, but I concluded that would be too much for my weary troops.

Right, so rest today, strike south towards Landshut tomorrow. That's the quickest way to get back in the fight and do something useful.

But

This morning I receive this dispatch ending the game. I'll let Wendy give the game wrap up:

The game ends on turn 47 at 1000 hours on the 21^st of April 1809.

 At 0800 hours on the battlefield between Pfeffenhausen and Weihmichl Davout orders his cavalry division, which by this time consisted of less than 1000 Cuirassier, to retreat covered by Friant's 8,000 infantrymen. As the Cuirassier tried to disengage from the centre they were hit by massed volleys from Jellacic's 13,000 infantry, Fresnel's 4,000 elite Grenadiers, and charges from the Ulm and Keinmeyer Cuirassier divisions which combined was about 7,000 elite Cuirassier. Against this the exhausted and vastly outnumbered French Cuirassier shattered like a basket of eggs after having an anvil dropped on them. Friant's men covered the routing Cuirassier but were themselves devastated by volleys from Hohenzollern's Corps which outnumbered them by over two to one. After taking heavy casualties Friant limped off the field in good order but with damned few men left and only 6 morale points remaining. Davout's shattered Corps limps north away from the sound of Austrian cheers and hymns being sung in victory behind them.

 On the Rottenburg road Napoleon is hustling his ad hoc force of three infantry divisions southwards. His lead division is Morand's Division from Davout's III Corps which is still strong in numbers and in decently high spirits after taking part in the victory over Kollowrath the night before, although they might be less impressed if they realized how hollow that victory was since Kollowrath managed to hold them up long enough for the rest of the army to gather at Weihmichl and crush Davout before he and Napoleon could combine their forces. Morand catches up to Hillier's rearguard at the Klein Laber river and after a short skirmish the exhausted Austrian cavalry forming that rearguard is quickly defeated and sent routing off to the south. The other two infantry divisions in Napoleon's ad hoc force are from Massena's Corps and they begin to slowly march cross country towards the sound of the guns around Pfeffenhausen little knowing that they have no chance of arriving in time to effect the battle there which is already over by 10:00 am.

 Most of Napoleon's divisions in Corps at this time are either shattered or scattered to the winds completely unable to support each other. Ouidinot made himself combat ineffective a day and a half ago when he split up his divisions and scattered them to the winds leaving one in Munich, sending one east from Moosburg towards Landschut on the south bank of the Isar, and sending his cavalry east from Moosberg along the north bank of the river. Ouidinot now sits in Postau with what's left of his cavalry division, just a few hundred strong, completely alone and cut off from any support. Lefebvre's Corps is pretty exhausted after tangling with Bellegarde and Lichtenstein multiple times over the past two days and has retreated to Eggolsheim where he is recovering with Vandame's shattered cavalry division. He is too far away and too tired to be able to effect the outcome of the campaign at this point. Vandame's small Corps has been completely shattered after multiple valiant attempts to stop Kollowrath and Hillier. He will need at least a day to let his Corps recover a fraction of their morale. Massena's Corps is now divided. He sits with his shattered divisions just north of Rohn while his one half decently battleworthy division and one exhausted but still holding together division accompany Napoleon south to their inevitable doom.

 The Austrian army meanwhile is consolidated just north of the Isar with half their Corps in great shape, well rested and fighting fit and having just won another battle. Kollowrath and Hillier's Corps are both exhausted and will require a day to recover even a portion of their morale once they make it to the safety of Landschut. At this point there is little that Napoleon can do except retreat to either Ingoldstadt and/or Ratisbonne and wait for his fresh troops currently on the march from Spain while he rests his remaining men in Bavaria. The Austrians in the meantime have the initiative and would no doubt follow him and besiege him with their main force while probably sending a Kollowrath and Hillier to besiege and recapture Munich and Ratisbonne either consecutively or one after the other. The fall of both places would be only a matter of time.

 I hope that you enjoyed this campaign. It was a real nail biter for me, it went back and forth and there were times when I was sure that one side and then the other was about to win it. I will post a series of day by day campaign video after action reports on my Youtube channel as I complete them over the next few weeks but basically I think the crisis point of the campaign was on the 20^th of April when Davout and Massena where destroying Kollowrath and Hillier who had been fighting them all day long while being completely abandoned by Bellegarde who was just 5 km away. If Bellegarde had come to their aid then it would have been a complete game changer. At the same time Napoleon missed his opportunity to consolidate his two strongest corps with Lannes elite Cuirassier divisions and then fall on and destroy Bellegarde, Kollowrath and Hillier when the later two were absolutely on the verge of collapse. If he had done so he would have defeated half the Austrian army and been able to consolidate the rest of his corps on his position and then attack the other half of the Austrian army somewhere around Moosburg or Freising most likely. 

Orange squares are battle sites. As you will note, there's an awful lot of Austrians waiting for me at Landshut.

So I think my initial mistake was covering Davout at Ratisbonne, instead of deploying to block the crossing at Munich, Freising, Moosburg and Landshut. My corps would have suffered badly, but stopping the Austrians for a critical day, or even two, and perhaps shattering a few of their divisions in the process, would have bought the Imperial side a chance. Of course not knowing where the Austrians were massing and threatening to cross initially didn't help.

Ah well. Once again this experience gives me profound respect for the generals of the past who are often criticized for "blunders" when they are operating with out of date, vague intelligence, out of date orders, and restricted to a road network that might not go where they want to go.