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Leipzig Campaign : Battle of Olbernhau Pt. 2

It goes without saying that this blog has been stalled for some time while I have had my hands full with work and kids.  I have had the AAR for the Battle of Olbernhau (see previous post) mostly completed for some time, but it has been languishing forgotten in the limbo of the "drafts" file.  In the effort to re-start things in motion around here, the first order of business is to publish it!    Battle of Olberhau After Action Report  Prelude The town of Olberhnahu with forested hills to the east (rear).  The Allies enter the table from more or less this position moving from right to left, then turning sharply west (left) As outlined in the previous post ( here ), our scenario revolved a hypothetical encounter of the French IX Corps and the Allied Army of Bohemia just west of the town of Olbernhau, southern Saxony, in August 1813.  The battle game is preceded by the approach of the town by Count Pahlen III’s Russian hussar division, moving in from the
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Leipzig Campaign : Battle of Olbernhau Pt. 1

During the first turn (Aug. 18) of the Leipzig campaign hosted by MurdocK, and while French forces menaced far-off Berlin, an engagement was precipitated by the movement of both French and Allied forces into the Erzgebirg mountains bordering southern Saxony and northern Bohemia. MacDonald had sent a strong cavalry division ahead of XI corps south into the Marienberg area of southern Saxony, while FmL Prohaska and Gen. Barclay de Tolly lead elements of the Army of Bohemia into the same area north from the Bohemian town of Chomutov, across the centre of the Erzgebirg mountains and through the Saxon town of Olbernhau. The French cavalry advance guard was probing east of Marienberg and encountered leading elements of de Tolly’s command in the vicinity of Olbernhau. My campaign colleagues kindly allowed me to play the out the game resulting from the encounter. Now that marking course work etc is done, I'm finally getting round to posting the report. I interpreted the scenario as a

Bordurian raiders strike at King Ivan's rearguard

During his desperate march through the snow and the night back toward Klow, King Ivan left a small rear guard at the small town of Orehovo.  This was a wise move in the circumstances, as his force was flagging and increasingly disordered and would surely have been destroyed by a well organized rear attack.  Orehovo had modest fortifications constructed by the Bordurians to protect the bridge leading to Klow, defenses that dated back to the before their campaigns against King Karel II (before 1645).   With a fort and a bridge at its back (to the east), Orehovo was an ideal place to block pursuit and it was in fact the last place where Ivan could reasonably hope to do so with the men at his disposal.  Ivan’s rear guard was quite small, consisting of a squadron of huszjar light cavalry (Syldavian hussars, rather good men but there weren’t many of them), a substantial battalion of militia infantry typically used as light infantry (the steadier of the two

Crossing the Spree River, south of Potsdam

La Belle Dame Sans Merci I'm going to admit in public here to a sort of dalliance with an old flame.   You probably know who I'm talking about; she is sophisticated and elegant  and also maddeningly  complicated and always out of reach, an infamous femme fatale...  That's right, Napoleonics.  She showed up in town unexpectedly and after one little flourish of a pelisse I found the King's Shilling in my hand, for the second time!  Soon I was painting up a few units to fill out armies I had more or less put aside ten years ago.   Is this a mid life crisis? ; )   In the 1990's, Napoleonics were my consuming interest.     I painted quite a lot of figures and tried a few different rules sets and even a campaign or two before the flame cooled (or was it my eyesight declining?) and I moved on.  I returned to wargames after a walkabout and have been very happily working on early to mid Horse and Musket (NYW to SYW) ever since.  However, on a whim b ack in the fall, I res