Chateauneuf 1814

Action at Chateauneuf

by David Commerford

There in front of Curial, was indeed Ricard's Division. However, by this time a good part of it was headed across his direction of travel, towards the high ground. It was immediately obvious to Curial that whatever the course of the preceding action, Ricard appeared to have got the worse of it.

To add to the situation, the Allied cavalry had indeed followed, as he anticipated and were trying to make their way through the broken ground his Brigade had just skirted. As Curial hastily redeployed his force, bringing the Cavalry and Artillery to the front, every thing seemed to happen at once.

No sooner had he dispatched an Aide to find Ricard, than one arrived from the aforementioned, requesting support. In reality, it was a good bit more than a request. This in turn presented it's own problem. Needless to say, by Guard Divisionaire's, custom and indeed protocol, as far as Curial was concerned, it was at the very absolute, a request, nothing more. However, at that point, fate conspired to take a hand in this tricky situation. The Allied Cavalry moving North, had seen something they could not resist and at the same time not seen something they should have. In a manner that would have made even their British counter parts blush, they burst out of the bad going and launched themselves at the remnants of one of Ricard's routing Battalions.

What they had failed to observe was the proximity of Curial's cavalry. With the Chasseurs, held in reserve, insuring against any intervention from supporting formations still coming through the rough ground. The Grenadiers a Cheval arrived on the flank of the dispersed Allied troopers like a dark blue thunderbolt shattering the Allied Cavalry and driving them off toward Chateauneuf in complete disarray.

Here, from Curial's point of view, another benefit of Guard command came into play. As with sequential ease the Grenadiers reformed and the Chasseurs repositioned to cover the Horse Artillery. As they in turn came into action, against the supporting Allied horsemen forcing them to retire after a sharp cannonade.

Curial's fall and the eventual end of the action

Needless to say the Allies themselves had not been idle during this interval. Pushing both infantry and artillery, East from Chateauneuf and South towards Ricard's repositioned force, on the high ground. Curial, faced with increasing artillery fire from the vicinity of Chateauneuf, responded by moving forward to supervise a realignment of his own artillery and to pull back the now exposed heavy cavalry. The latter proving unnecessary as their Chef d' Escadron had already lengthened the range himself.

While moving to confirm this movement, the last chapter of Curial's eventful day took a turn, as a six pounder ball struck his horse in mid stride, sending both the unfortunate animal and his rider crashing to the ground.

Aides rushed forward, but it was several minutes before the stunned General was fit to retake command. During that time Ricard had realised that the position could not be held and messengers had arrived from him notifying his intention to withdraw to the South East.

On regaining his senses Curial was horrified to see how close the Allied infantry had now come. His unit commanders had managed to keep them at arms length but a withdrawal was a "now or never" option. Again, the "Joys" of commanding the best troops on the field proved paramount.

A turning movement by the leading Allied infantry elements, over the ground where their mounted colleges had toiled prior to their ill fated charge, was stopped by a blast from the steady ranks of 1st/2nd Grenadiers a Pied. This served as a warning of the "Kaisergardes" presence and provided enough of an interregnum for the withdrawal to be conducted in a situation where in the fading light, one side was as happy to be leaving as the other was to let them go!

Chateauneuf – The Reality

So it was a wargame then! Well yes, of course but one with a difference. To start with, the style I chose to describe the action was quite deliberate. Not just to spin out the tale but for a very good reason. The manner and the fairly limited amount of detail I included, where a reflection of how little there was to go on during and immediately after the action. It serves to illustrate possibly just how little even the participants of history really knew about what happened, in what was a much wider action.

How do I know this? Well apart from the fact that I was that Comte de Empire (in the theatrical sense) the experience was shared by a number of gamers from Europe, Australia and the USA who all found the same thing. I also know because we spent a number of further days arguing who knew what and who did what, before concluding that none of us could lay claim to anything about the action, apart from our own experience, reflected against the experience of others.

How then could this happen? Well I can answer in two words: COMMAND ISOLATION.

None of us had the complete picture of what was happening at any one time and we were totally reliant on the level of Situational Awareness (as discussed in my article in FE 57) we could achieve at any point in time.

Because none of us were present at the table while the game was being played, none of us could take in the entire view. None of us had any communication with each other, apart from that written through the umpire. Probably most important of all, our only view of "the world" was from the perspective of a 15mm horseman and even that was restricted by conditions and events.

So, you say, it was Kreigsspeil. Well yes, it was but Kreigsspeil of a special kind.

More Chateauneuf 1814

Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #58
Back to First Empire List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2001 by First Empire.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com