Naumburg - What happened next?

Hand ot hand fighting in the town

It seemed a shame to leave the wargame after just four moves, just because the campaign commander wanted to withdraw the Russian corps. So Jan and I continued the game to see what would have happened.

We played the next four moves, which would have been night time in the campaign. The result was a confusing draw. The French lost 6 infantry and 1 cavalry, to the Russian 3 infantry and 3 cavalry. However the Russian cavalry were in rout, and took the reserve infantry brigade with them.

The French garde were still fighting hand to hand in two of the town sections, and this could have gone either way. However they still had one brigade in reserve, whereas the Russian reserve had routed.

The Russian guns were masked by the town fighting and were redeploying to the left of the town, but with the loss of the reserve infantry and the cavalry brigade, they would have been very vunerable to the French cavalry.

These casualties would be light in many wargame rules, but would have a noticeable effect in ours. Had it been a campaign game both commanders would have had to decide what they wanted to do at day break, and that would have depended on what friendly corps were within supporting distance. I can't really say anything about that, as it would give away campaign intelligence which is not public knowledge yet.

The routing brigades would have rallied, though the Russian cavalry would not be much use
with so many casualties. If this were our own campaign I would put it down as a French victory, though a costly one.