Bridgehead at Valeggio - 1848 Mincio Campaign

The sun rose and the soldiers started preparing breakfast and packing their equipment for resuming the advance. General Bes was happy: he had taken the bridge at Valeggio - with some luck and speed, he would soon reach Radetzky's rearguard. The men of his brigade were of high morale and eager for a fight despite the recent forced march. They had been greeted as heroes and liberators at Milan, and it has been encouraging, a good start of this campaign.

"They are coming!" An aide came to him with news from the forward sentries.

"Who?" Bes replied. Was the King already here? As far as he knew, even if the rest of the army was only slightly behind him, he didn't expect the main body to reach Valeggio at least until the afternoon - or maybe tomorrow.

"The Austrians" said the aide "they are closing on our positions". It took a moment for Bes to understand. If we lose the bridge, our army will face a bloodbath in retaking it.

He smiled slightly as he prepared to give the orders for the protection of the bridgehead. His soldiers would face the enemy even sooner than expected.

"Send a messenger to General Federici at division HQ, and to the King. "Tell them we need all the reinforcements we can get to hold the bridge."

I started the Mincio Campaign I talked about here. With the Sardinians/Piedmontese trying to cross the Mincio at two different locations, I decided to start with the bridgehead at Valeggio. (Note to readers: miniatures you see in the pictures are plastic 1/72 Napoleonics, acting as proxies)

I used scenario 5 (Bridgehead) of Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames (OHW). This is the layout:

I tried to see how it would be with some buildings near the bridge, roughly representing the town of Valeggio.

It looks much better, but I wonder how it would affect play balance (I'll talk about it later). I therefore chose to keep the original scenario layout for now.

I'm still in playtest mode, so I played the scenario two times, one with OHW and one with Simplicity in Practice (SiP) to see the difference. Normally I use Wargaming 19th Century Europe, but I wanted to try these two, the first for quickness and the second for its mechanics. For OHW I had already played several times with the raw rules (I tend to use the Rifle and Sabre ruleset, even if for 1848 the Horse and Musket ones could be technically better) so I wanted to modify them a bit to address some issues I had:

1) infantry fire range is too great. Units seem to fire at each other from unbelievable ranges, at least when they are all armed with muskets. I understand it's made to avoid having defensive fire during the charge sequence (so you can fire at cavalry in your turn before they can charge in theirs), but I chose to decrease fire range to 10cm (as in SiP) and allow for defensive fire when charged, with hits applied immediately.

2) adding a morale check when you're fired upon and suffer hits (it always happens with the Sabre and Rifle rules), as suggested in another wargame blog. So after suffering hits you roll 3D6: if result is equal or higher than your current hits, you retreat 6 cm and lose 2 more hits. i felt it would represent both the progressive deterioration of units (as losses mount, passing the roll would become harder and units would be more brittle) and allow for units pushing back their opponents with successful attacks.

Turn 1 - Piemonte Brigade (General Bes) protecting the bridge
while Austrian Cavalry and Infantry advance

Bersaglieri rush to help, while Austrian reinforcements arrive behind the woods

 The Austrians got one of the worst reinforcement schedule they could get. While the two initial units arrived near the hill - the rest of the reinforcements came on the other side, behind the woods - and given that infantry and artillery can't enter woods (they didn't have skirmisher units) they are forced to make a long detour to reach the defenders. This would have a major impact.

As more defending brigades enter, the austrian Cavalry had been repulsed
and the infantry was isolated against Bes' soldiers and the Bersaglieri skirmishers.

With the first Austrian infantry unit routed, it really took a lot of time for the Austrians
to get their other units in attack positions;
meanwhile the Piedmontese bridgehead became stronger and stronger

The Austrian cavalry has managed to charge Bes brigade in thee flank,
routing it, but was soon routed itself by other supporting units..

As I said earlier. all Austrian reinforcements arrived behind the woods. It could make historical sense: the "north" is on the left of the picture, and the bridge at Monzambano is there. Most likely the Austrians were sending troops mainly from there... but it made for a harder battle here. (Actually, I realized later that I had misread the rules and the last reinforcements should have come from the hill side, but I let it go and continued).

Austrians finally prepare to attack, but Piedmontese artillery is in position too

The two attacking Austrian units rout the Bersaglieri,
but are too battered and will be unable to make much headway

The remaining Austrians units arrive, and start to deploy

From bad to worse for the Austrians. By attacking piecemeal, they are subject to strong concentrated fire from the Piedmontese. And they are unable to bring their artillery on the front.

Despite suffering losses, this last confrontation will see
their units routed while the Piedmontese lose only one.

By turn 12, all Austrian units had been routed, and the Piedmontese had retained control of the bridge.

Ruleset comments: the morale rule was mostly a disappointment - it wasn't really a factor except for units near the breakpoint, which meant it just quickened their rout but didn't really provoke the push-back / progressive deterioration effect that I hoped for. I might have to try it again. Plus, having defending fire meant I didn't know how to apply it to charging units - roll before the charge when they suffer hits from the defenders? or after? I decided to roll it after all charge losses were assessed. It mostly had no effect anyway and therefore was a non-factor. Reducing fire range was a better choice, but maybe 12 cm would be better than 10 cm. Still unsure about it.

Scenario comments: the Austrians got to the battlefield piecemeal, couldn't coordinate and were accordingly defeated. The arrival point of reinforcements had much to do with it - without skirmishers, arriving behind the woods delays a lot.

Overall, I had fun, but somehow I didn't see the "besieged" situation I thought when I think "bridgehead". This may have been an effect of the reinforcement schedule more than the ruleset.

I then replayed the scenario with SiP rules. I just tested one variation, regarding close combat: instead of rolling dice and see who made a higher result I would consider hits on 4+ - as other blogs suggested. Still, I will calculate results for both systems and see if any difference is made.

The first Austrian units arrived from behind the woods again, but things then proceeded differently from the first battle, with more Austrian troops coming from the road and from the hillside.

Initial moves

Slower movement rates in SiP means more turns before contact

In OHW, infantry moves 6" or 15cm. In SiP, infantry moves 10cm. Cavalry moves 30cm in OHW, 20cm in SiP. In both cases, it's 33% less. This has a relevant effect in determining when units get in contact, because in SiP it takes some more turns. Does this affect play balance? Possibly, because sides which have to cross larger parts of the battlefield will take longer to do so, which can make some scenarios artificially harder to win unless they are adapted. Here it impacted the Austrians on the side - being unable to use the road they couldn't reach the Piedmontese and this allowed them to be reinforced.

Both sides receive reinforcements

The Austrian hussars attacked the Piedmontese infantry directly. Not a smart move (a frontal assault by light cavalry against formed close order infantry is seldom successful) but i wanted to test close combat. As predicted, odds were brutally against the cavalry as the defending infantry could claim several advantages. In this case, no difference was noted among the different methods for resolving close combat: the Piedmontese rolled more hits at 4+ than the Austrians, and the total dice result too was higher. The battered cavalry (now at 3DP) was then kept in reserve for most of the battle.

After the Austrian Hussars failed to break the enemy, it's time for the infantry to try.

The Piedmontese were able to create a defensive position roughly as an half-circle in front of the bridge, with Bersaglieri skirmishers on the left, infantry in the centre and artillery on the left. Their strength lay in depth - reinforcing infantry was ready to cover any hole that could be created. The Austrians instead had chosen to maximize firepower and concentrate on individual enemy units, but this left no reserves to exploit successes.

The Austrians are slow in deploying,
allowing the Piedmontese to create a defensive position

The firefight was intense but at first produced little results. A potential breakthrough could happen on the Piedmontese right/Austrian left. Thanks to Austrian artillery on the hill, the Piedmontese brigade on the right was weakened enough to allow the Austrians to charge it with their own infantry... the entire flank could crumble, but the attack was repulsed! Thanks to support, both attacker and defender ultimately had the same number of advantages, and the defenders won. In this case too there was no difference in results using the two resolution mechanisms. The Austrians rolled only 1 hit at 4+, while the Piedmontese rolled 2. Likewise, the Austrian die total was 1 point less than the Piedmontese one. The attackers had to fall back and would be eliminated soon after.

The Austrian infantry on the right has just failed to break the Piedmontese line
and had to retreat! In the centre, the battle is fierce.

The Piedmontese have reserves, who help keep the line intact...

The Austrians managed to destroy one Piedmontese infantry brigade in the centre, but it was replaced by another. This too was routed, but another one arrived - and it finally proved too much for the weary Austrians who had endured the Bersaglieri fire for hours.

...but Austrian fire is efficient and creates new holes.

In the end, most Austrian units were routed and the remaining ones were too weakened to have any hope of breaking the Piedmontese line, leaving contro of the bridge to King Charles Albert's men.

In the end however, it's the Austrians that have to concede,
having lost most of their units and being unable
to break the last Piedmontese defenders.

It was a more tense battle than the previous one. Firefights in OHW are really fast to reach resolution (at least with the Sabre and Rifle rules, I should have used the Horse and Musket ones instead), here they were more attritional, and it felt more historically correct.

Ruleset comments: First time I used the SiP rules and I'm happy with the result. I liked how the battle unfolded and I felt the rules drove that nicely. I feared that the slow movement rates would make the 15-turn limit too short, but the game arrived to conclusion in 13 so it wasn't an issue. Not sure if the slower Austrian approach helped the Piedmontese however. Still the game was fun.

Scenario comments: this time the Austrians arrived from different locations and it made a marked difference. They were able to mount a more coordinated attack and had some success, but their lack of reserves proved fatal as they couldn't exploit their successes. The initial cavalry charge proved to be detrimental for the Austrians: the hussars were too weak to attack again, and instead they would have been better used by threatening/charging the Bersaglieri skirmishers on the Piedmontese left - then threaten the flank of the infantry. Overall, a good battle narrative was created.

After the battle, I thought about using terrain that models the historical battlefield. I'll talk about that in a later post.