Notes

20: Some Interesting Tactics
for Wargamers from the
Battle of Wagram 5th/6th July - 1809

by Dave Hollins


While the following manouvres were probably not as planned and organised as the writers suggest and more a product of events, wargamers may like to give the following a test:

"An (Austrian) Cavalry artillery battery was successful in a manouvre, which was remeniscent of the Seven Years War .... As French Cuirassiers attacked Austrian cavalry, the latter urned away to the right and left, as the attackers closed to within 800 paces,and unmasked a cavalry battery, which with a prepared salvo of cannister fire put the Cuirassiers to flight; thereupon, they were taken in the flanks by the cavalry which had swung away." From: Dolleczek: Geschichte der bsterreichischen Artillerie (1887)

At the climax of the battle, having turned his 'Grand Battery' on the Austrian centre, Napoleon sent forward MacDonald's V Corps to break the line, where the Austrian 3rd Korps joined the Reserve Corps.

"At Napoleon's signal, MacDonald launched his assault. The French broke into the Austrian line like a wedge. At the critical moment in the breakthrough the two Austrian Korps carried out a flank turn, so that the French assault troops found themselves moving into an evernarrowing funnel". Fired on from both the front and flanks, the French suffered heavy losses and had to fall back.

From: Hertenberger: Erzherzog Karl (1983)


Notes


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