The Rearguard at Reichenbach, 1813
9th July 2026, 3 Comments
The Napoleonic Wars, Shadow of the Eagles, 28mm
When my friend Charles Grant asked me to play through a game for his forthcoming wargames scenario book I jumped at the chance. Charles always comes up with unusual and challenging scenarios and ‘teasers’, so I knew this would be good. He wanted this to be a rearguard action set in the Napoleonic wars. It only involved seven units a side, but the kicker was the balance of the two forces – Red and Blue. 
Blue army was in retreat, and a small rearguard force was ordered to hold Red army back, while the bulk of the army crossed a river and took up a new defensive position behind it. Red army sent out a force to break through the rearguard, so that the rest of the army could pursue the enemy. I decided to set this game in Saxony in early September 1813, and made the rearguard (Blue force) Prussian, and the pursuers (Red force) French. 
I loosely based it on the advance of Marshal Macdonald as he pushed back the Prussians under Blucher towards the River Neisse near Gorlitz. In this game, the Prussian rearguard was made up of four infantry battalions (one of them being light infantry), two cavalry regiments (one heavy, the other light), and a gun battery, all under the command of Colonel Steinmetz, a brigade commander of the Prussian 1st Corps. 
The French also had seven units, but this time the makeup was slanted towards cavalry, with four cavalry regiments (three light, one heavy), two infantry battalions (one light and one combined grenadiers) and a battery of horse artillery. They were led by General Charpentier, from Macdonald’s XI Corps. For this game, Chris Werb commanded Blue force – the Prussians, while I took charge of Red force – the French. 
Being one of Charles’ scenarios, there was bound to be a few twisters. One was that Red force had to dice to see which road from the west they’d appear on – A or B. It turned out that the whole of Red force entered the table on road B, and only a brigade of two light cavalry regiments trotted onto the table along road A.
Chris’ Prussians elected to make their stand along the line marked S-T on the map. At the top a unit of fusiliers held the wooded hill, the Karlsberg, while a Landwehr battalion blocked Road A. Everyone else was deployed to the north of the town of Reichenbach.
Given the bulk of French approached the enemy along Road B, that was surely where the main clash would take place. Sure enough, it began with a cavalry clash, between a regiment of French Chasseurs a Cheval and one of Prussian national hussars. 
The scrap was a draw, as while the Prussians suffered more casualties, both sides had to pull back to lick their wounds. By now, though, the rest of the French had caught up, and I faced a quandary – whether to try and batter my way through, or to try something more subtle.I opted for battering, which naturally meant using my cavalry to take on the Prussian infantry. To even the odds I used my French horse artillery battery to soften the enemy before the cavalry charged in. 
Predictably, results were mixed. My dragoons struck an immobile wall of Prussian musketeers, and after taking canister fire from the Prussian guns the French horsemen broke and ran. By then though, I was committed to my rash plan!
Then the 7th Hussars charged another Prussian musketeer battalion, this time deployed behind a hedge on the northern end of the town. This time, and thanks to some help from the French horse artillery, the Prussians were forced to retire, blowing a hole in their defence. The battle had reached a somewhat scrappy stage, with units flitting about all over the place. Still, the French had a cavalry regiment and the combined grenadiers to exploit the gap, and these then advanced to split the Prussian line. 
That’s where we ended the game. We could go on, but it was clear the Prussian rearguard wouldn’t be able to prevent the French from pushing on past Reichenbach. Now interestingly, this was fought on a 7×5 foot table. Charles, though, uses big foot units – around 40 figures strong. Ours are 24 figures, with cavalry regiments of 16. So, Chris had a tougher job holding his line, but his deployment was perfect. Only the luck of the dice gods let him down. 
Hi Angus. It was a terrific game. My recollection, however, is that the cavalry charging the fence were badly shot up and didn’t make it through. Other infantry (one battalion of light and one of line) were fast closing in on them and, had they stopped there, they’d have been well and truly pasted. If you look at the picture where you describe the “scrappy stage”, the infantry behind the hedge are still in situ. There was no gap to exploit.
According to my notes, Chris, the Prussian battalion lining the hedge lost the melee badly, and were forced to withdraw. they were ‘Weakened’, and only one ‘hit point’ away from being ‘Routed’, and lifted from the table. In the process of withdrawing they created a sizeable hole in the Prussian line. The two remaining fresh Prussian units of infantry were on the wrong side of the town and unable to intervene, while the Prussian dragoons had just taken a pounding from the French horse battery. We rolled for the next turn’s initiative, which the French won. As your guns had fired they couldn’t have ‘opportunity fired’ into the two French cavalry units as they exploited the gap, while my unit of fresh grenadiers were right behind them, and would have followed in their wake. So, due to the constraints of time we had to stop the game there, but I’m more than happy to set it up again, from the same point, Chris, if you think you stood a good chance of turning things around!
To be fair, your artillery rolls were as atrocious as mine. To paraphrase David Beattie; “”There seems to be something wrong with our bloody guns today” 🙂