Rear Slope - the Battle of Windmill Hill

Last night we played a Napoleonic game at my place (likely one of the last games there as I'm moving house in early December). The game was based on the 'Rear Slope' scenario from Charles S Grant's 'Scenarios for Wargames' book—referred to as the white book in our circles to distinguish it from the red 'Scenarios for all Ages' from the same author.

The game pitted a mixed Bavarian–French division sized force in the attack against Austrian defenders. The Austrians were played by Phil while I took the Bavarians. The aim of the scenario was to take (or prevent the taking of) a big hill feature that dominated the right rear quarter of the table.

I had big plans of using combined arms tactics to break through the Austrian lines: ride up with my heavy cavalry to force the Austrian infantry in squares, bombard those with horse artillery and then slam into them with the infantry. Unfortunately, my brain seems to freeze over whenever I try to apply such Napoleonic tactics on the actual table (as evidenced by the one Napoleonic competition I played in, where I ended last with 0 points :) ) and the actual game deviated somewhat from the plan. There were squares, there was artillery bombardment and there was an infantry charge, but none of them were in any way coordinated. The fact that for some reason I deployed my infantry assault force immediately behind the windmill where they would have to go through it to advance was instrumental in this (my reasoning was that I would swing the infantry left or right of the windmill depending on which Austrian unit looked the most crunchy after the artillery bombardment).

All that is not to say that I did not win the game, but that had everything to do with dice rolling and nothing with tactics. This is the situation at the end of the battle, where the attacking Bavarian infantry has blasted a hole in the Austrian line by breaking IR1 Kaiser and throwing back IR27 Chasteler:



For the campaign diary (where I intend to keep a track of all the units in my collection), these are the units that fought:

• I and II battalion, 1st Bavarian Line Infantry
• I and II battalion, 2nd Bavarian Line Infantry
• 1st Bavarian Light Infantry
• 1st & 2nd Squadrons 1st Bavarian Dragoons
• 1st & 2nd Squadrons 1st Bavarian Chevaulegers
• 1st & 2nd Squadrons 7th Cuirassiers (French)
• Regniers Battery Horse Artillery (Bavarian)
• I and II battalion, 3rd Ligne
• I and II battalion, 57th Ligne

• I battalion, IR 1 Kaiser
• I battalion, IR 44 Bellegarde
• I battalion, IR 27 Chasteler
• I battalion, IR 58 Beaulieu
• I battalion, Gradiscaner Grenzer
• Divisional Foot artillery battery
• 1st & 2nd Squadrons 6 Kurassiere Melas
• 3rd & 4th Squadrons 6 Kurassiere Melas

Honorouble mentions go to I/1 and 1/II Bavarian Line for breaking through IR 1 Kaiser, the Bavarian Dragoons for singlehandedly charging and surviving the charge against 2 units of Austrian Kurassiere and IR 44 Bellegarde for charging and destroying half of Regnier's artillery battery, with only half of the battalion.

Broken on the field of battle were two guns of Regnier, IR 1 Kaiser and 7th Cuirassiers.

Finally, here's some more photographs of the battle:


The victorious I/1 and I/II Bavarian Line.


1st Dragoons

IR44 Bellegarde (-) after its double victory against Regnier.