I do have a certain amount of agreement with Bill Haggart on melees and the use of the bayonet. To wit: Napoleonic melees were rare (infantry; with one side breaking before contact was made. And if contact was made, one unit cracked and ran before the hand to hand casualties began to mount up. P point also to consider is that you may have as many casualties in a 100 man skirmish melee in a woods or building as when 3 or 4 battalions collide. You must consider the weapon, the musket is also a spear, club and a staff and would be used as such freely. While I do agree that melees are rare I don't think that you can conclude that casualties were small: my argument is that anyone in the position to be, at. the very least; bayoneted is not likely to live. Besides being in the front line, if you fall, you're strongly in for the possibility of being trampled, hit by further fire and other non-sursival indignities that someone who lies wounded several hundred yards away may be spared. BATTLE REPORT I had received my orders and the columns began the march by four. By dawn pickets and a battalion of light infantry held a wood and were infiltrating a small village on the right of a low ridge which ran across our front with a small town dominating its end and a cross roads - we had to secure town and ridge before the masses of the Austrian menace reached it - I suspected the town to be occupied. By dawn the column had reached a road fork and split, each brigade for each town and the ridge. Before them trotted the cavalry, light and heavy with a horse battery heading for the ridge. As the ridge was crested the light cavalry halted before the masses of Austrians but before the cuirassiers lay a vast artillery park - bugles sounded. The heavies trotted forward, finally recoiled from fire and fell back. At this time all our cavalry was falling back. - our superiority was temporarily gone without neutralizing much of the enemy. But to our troops credit, the Austrian assault on the village on the right was thrust back. At this report the ridge is covered in a massive fire fight with all our cavalry moving up. The major town is fully occupied by enemy troops and will have to be reduced by artillery fire - this of course can only be done if the center remains ours. As it is we have no reserves, nor could we have. The frontage is too wide and the enemy too vast, we must exploit his mistakes.... An interesting thing to mention is now, with the computers help, we figure casualties exactly down to the marl. Quite an interesting state of affairs. We'll see how the battle progresses next issue - as I've noted before - they're not Westphalians: Jerome is somewhere on the Austrian border. Oh well.... Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 1 No. 78 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1984 by Emperor's Headquarters This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com