Mockern-The Battle for Germany 1813

 

Last Saturday, 5 of us got together for the penultimate battle in our 1813 campaign.  The scenario features the Battle of Mockern and was fought in October of 1813, as part of the Battle of Leipzig. As you can see from the map below this action was fought north of Leipzig and featured the French under Jarmin defending against attacking Prussians under Yorck on day one of the battle.

Overview of the Battle of Leipzig

Victory conditions for the Prussians were to capture Mockern in 20 turns that was made up of 2 BUA's back to back. Victory for the French was to inflict 3 Suave qui Peut's on the Prussians.

GdA has a scouting phase and myself and Iannick played it out a couple of days before our gathering. The French (myself and Helge) had to decided to just field 3 of our 5 brigades and the start of the game. 

Pelleport was deployed on the yellow marker, with Lorge's Cavalry on the pink and Jarmin on light blue, despite 4 scouting attempts the Prussians were only able to identify the position of the cavalry. 

We ended up having a pretty tight deployed frontage that I believe almost lost us the game but more about that later. 

The French kept Bouquet and Joubert as off table reserves. The Prussians had no off table reserves aside from Rummel who would arrive as a reinforcement on Turn 6.

The Game

Saturday came and the Prussians (Graham, Iannick, David)  rapidly deployed their troops across the whole width of the table, I dod not remember their exact order but Mecklenberg was deployed on their right flank with Sohr on their left flank with the other 3 deployed infantry brigades in between. We deployed Pelleport on our left with the 1e Marine holding the front Mockern BUA, with Lorge next and Jarmin on his right. I will let the photos tell the story.

The table, I think it is roughly 8x5', Mockern is in the distance with the French position to the right. There was large hill on the French side, otherwise open ground.

Here are the starting positions as seen from the Mockern side of the table. You can see to the left the Prussian wide deployment with their cavalry in the distance. The French had a very tight deployment with their 3 artillery batteries deployed together in defence of Mockern with their cavalry to the rear. Skirmishers were deployed to the left of and in front of Mockern (one legere unit deployed in skirmish). An infantry brigade was deployed to the right flank to defend against a flanking manoeuvre from the Prussians.

The Prussian players;  Graham, Iannick and David

Helge for the French and I am taking the photo!

Turn 4. The Prussian advance, as you can see they went into line pretty quickly, I believe this slowed their advance but did protect them against cannon as did the skirmishers. The French held their position aside from advancing the skirmish units on our left flank to harass the advancing Prussians. Our initial plan was to focus on our 3 batteries of artillery to weaken the enemy. The Prussian cavalry moved quickly to challenge our right flank.

Turn 6. The Prussians have advanced on all fronts and now their reserves have deployed. By now our artillery batteries are starting to suffer some attrition but we have weakened the front line Prussians.

Turn 12: Th ePrussians are now advancing on Mockern in column with their reserve. Their initial assault in line was repulsed. You can also see that Jarmin's infantry on our right flank is collapsing. The French have now brought on one of their reserve infantry brigades to buttress the right but also to be ready to support Mockern. You will notice that we have left the 2nd BUA unoccupied.  Our skirmishers have been pushed back but our cavalry is still intact.

Turn 12; a close up of the defence of Mockern.

Turn 18. A lot has happened. The Prussians were able to drive the French Marine Veterans out of one part of Mockern and only with great difficulty were one of our reserve units able to occupy the other half of the town. Our cavalry became trapped and was unable to challenge the advancing Prussians. By now, however, we had inflicted 2 Suave qui Peut on the Prussians. Before the Prussians could take all of Mockern we were able to inflict the 3rd Suave qui Peut...thus a very narrow French Victory.

Summing Up

I thought this was going to be an easy game for the French but the Prussians almost did win it. If their initial advance was a little more aggressive at the start, I think they might have got a victory before we met our Victory Conditions. Our defence was good but we had a lot of difficulty bringing in our reserves because of our narrow frontage. In retrospect, Jarmin should have been more to our right allowing our reserves to move more easily to support Mockern. I am not sure also if Pelleport should have started one of his battalions in the 2nd BUA. Certainly, his skirmishers did a good job to protect Mockern and were able to retreat in good order once their job was done. The French Cavalry, as usual, caused significant havoc to the Prussians. But a good game was played by all. I should note that around Turn 13-14, some of the Prussian players considered withdrawing their troops, Helge and myself urged them to continue the game as all was not lost. I believe we were quite correct in this and once they got "stuck in" they almost turned it around. 

There were also complaints about the actual scenario design with the one objective being stuck in a corner. I disagree totally. As gamers we are presented with what we are given, this was a historical simulation and the scenario was what it was. It ended up giving us a very good game, not an easy game but it was quite exciting.

Hopefully, we will get to the last game (Liebertwolkwitz) in this campaign fairly soon. I should note that there were 1500 18mm AB figures on the table and with the last scenario using the large OB option we hope to hit close to 2000 figures. And what will be very exciting is that we will see some Austrians.