For instructions on how to remotely play this battle, follow this link.

Battle of Lonato, Part One

Let us assume you managed to login and you started the program. We need to load the battle. In our test we assume to have available the French and Austrian Armies Order of Battle of the summer 1796, in Italy.

We intend to replay an encounter really happened, and see how the program manages to simulate it.

You will find different results from this description since virtual dice are rolled!

Background to the battle of Lonato

This encounter was fought during the campaign of Italy, 3rd of August 1796, between the Massena Division and two Austrian brigades detached to block the french advance towards Desenzano.
The Ockskay brigade was ordered to defend Lonato, with brigade Reuss following, while Massena was ordered by Napoleon to attack Desenzano, few km further from Lonato.
The battle began when an advance detachment (Pigeon) was attacked by the austrians while occupying the outskirts of Lonato. In the mean time Massena was moving towards Lonato, after bivouacking about 6km West.

If we look at out command chain we need to give orders to the following units:

• Ockskay: occupy Lonato and attack any enemy defending this position
• Reuss: move towards Lonato and support Ockskay.
• Massena: move to Desenzano and attack any enemy appearing along the route
• Pigeon: defend the outskirts of Lonato.

Napoleon is following Massena while no austrian higher echelon general is on the field.

The rest of the army is somewhere else.

Forces

Here is the basic information about units, their strength, type, quality and combat value. Their frontage is based on the game scale, which is set to 1:4000. One infantry or cavalry or artillery base is 4cm wide. It can be changed to adapt to your basing system.
The frontage is the maximum allowed frontage, calculated by putting all units in a single line. The unit frontage is used during combat to assess the number of men fighting. You will see more when we generate a melee later on.

I suggest to print these two documents, one is the battle roster and the second is the unit lanes that you may use to identify units on table.
Lonato.pdfbattleroster_roster.pdfRegarding the austrians, Ocksay will have specific orders to follow, and Reuss is supporting him. This is reflected in the command chain for the battle.Regarding the french, Napoleon is in command, so the player will be able to decide what is best for him to do. I decided to give a command post, which should be fixed during the battle, since he is overall commander of the Army of Italy and all messages coming from the other divisions are relayed to the post.

Open Battle

The battle file is called Lonato.xml. You need to open it by clicking on Open Battle Button of the Main window.

As soon as you type vlbgui and the return key three windows appear, after some time lag:

• one window has many buttons, it is the Main program window.
• one small windows appears saying VLB Napoleonic bla bla, just to satisfy my ego.
• one mid size window contains a running clock. In fact only the seconds are running. They are there just to check whether the program is really running or is stuck. The analog clock is the VLB battle time, that starts in our example at day 0, 00:00. A digital clock show the real time (GMT+1, Rome, Italy time). The battle clock window should never be closed during a game!

This file contains all unit descriptions, in terms of the blue book, all events happening, all melees, command chain and all needs to be recorded. You can make additional copies of the battle set by clicking on Save Button.

To check that you actually saved the battle you can open again by clicking on Open Battle, and check that now two files appear, one called Lonato.xml, and another one called 00:00:00:12.Lonato.xml, a backup file you may need to reload if you have done something wrong during the battle.

You are always allowed to go back in time to your previous paces by reopening files backed up during the game. If you play the game in two nights you will use this mechanism to restart at the proper time, without forgetting a single event!

Command Chain

All units are under the Commander in Chief orders, and they are linked in a command tree. Messages can only follow along the branches of this tree. The nodes of this tree may be just commanders or units. Both commanders and units have a command capability, to send messengers and verbal orders.

Now let us have a look at the two armies by looking at the command chain, by clicking at the Show Command Chain Button.

If you manage to open the command chain window, you will see the command tree, and you will have the possibility of double click on a unit. A dialog window will appear containing the unit long name, status and current orders.

You may look at both sides, french and austrian, by selecting the side at the top of the command chain window.
There is no Close button yet, so you may close this window by clicking on the small red button on the top left of the window.

End of first session

We have not assigned yet any orders, so there is not yet much to see.
Feel free to play a bit with this window, we are over with the first part. To close the program click on the Close Button.

Next session we will learn on how to assign initial orders and how to wait for sunrise.
This is a link to Part Two of the Battle of Lonato.