13. Second Battle of Dessau - 19th May 1813

There is a second battle at Dessau, fought on the 19th May.





General von Bulow's Prussian corps is holding the town, parts of French II and V Corps are advancing from Magdeburg. They are supported by Latour-Maubourg and his I Reserve Cavalry Corps.

The French cavalry screens have determined that the Prussians are deployed in depth both north and south of the town with cavalry on their wings and a brigade in reserve. For their part the Prussian cavalry have discovered that Victor's small II Corps is at Kroni with part of V Corps to it's right or south. The French left, or north, wing comprises entirely cavalry; a mix of light and heavies of various types.

To claim victory each side must hold the vital town of Dessau and its crossroads.

There is a Doodle Poll here.

Thanks.

Gentlemen,

We are going to fight this battle today, Monday 1st August at 20:00 BST, 21:00 CET, 15:00 EST.

We have six players and I hope others will wander by.

Andrew - can you make it?

Kevin - would you like to play?

If we can rally the Mikos and the Schmidts as well we'll have an excellent turn-out. See you in TS.

How long is the battle? If it's 2.5 hours, I might be able to play it.

I may be able to make this, but it might not be until right at 1500 EST or shortly thereafter. I plan on leaving work early today and only live 15 minutes from where I work.

I can confirm around 1200 EST today if I will make it to this event. That is of course if you'll have me.

I think I'll be able to play tonight. Would I be attached to French?

Andrew, the scenario is 2.5 hours. I expect the battle to be shorter than the maximum time as the sides begin quite close and the terrain is simple.

Miko, thanks! And yes, I think you fit best into the French team.

Jason, you are very welcome to play. We'll hold off a few minutes after 15:00 EST for you. There is a quite new player on the French side so to balance it up you can go Prussian.

It looks like I will be able to make it. I like playing as the Prussians so that works out. See you guys around 1500.

Sorry for the confusion but am going to put you with the French team now as they need an extra player.

Is it too late to add a humble (and totally rookie) infantry brigade commander to the match?

Of course. You will take a division though, but be aware its not big - its that inf brigade + 1 battery. (the divisions are scaled down to make the campaign manageable). I'll put you on the Prussian side.

Hi guys!
Sitting in TS, wondering if I'm in the wrong place or the schedule changed.

Yes there is a new TS, this is the IP : ts85.gameservers.com:9195
And this is the password: 20thmaine

Sorry, I don't know why, but I ceased to see all of you in the game... No more green & blue squares top-right, no one reacted to couriers, indeed no one moved anymore. So I quitted, thinking the match was crashed again (as the first try did), but now it seems the problem was mine - cause you are still into the battle, I presume. Well, I hope that Herr General Bulow did pick up my reserve brigade and used it better than I might have done.

Sorry Sam. I assumed people read the forums and see things like that!

Also sorry we lost you Jack. After we'd had so much trouble getting started we decided to press on without you as we needed to get the game finished in a sensible time. The briefing and player arrival stages took waaay too long, as usual!

You should get along to a midweek game when you can, these are often only a half-dozen players and so get going sooner and since things are less critical all around we can easily stop to resume if a player drops.

Fun battle, very good to play.

Honestly, I didn't even know that there was a campaign battle today!  I just decided to play today.  I guess I'm with Napoleon and his Grand Armee for the time being, which is ok, considering I have French Huguenot descendants!

Hi Alexman, are you Ian Walls? I am losing track of all the new players who have shown up recently!


The starting deployments

The battle was a crushing French victory for anyone who may be interested. The Prussian line held firm for the first 30 minutes as the French approached, sending V Corps NE and II Corps SE to strike both flanks of the defender's positions. Prince Eugene also detached the light cavalry divisions from I cavalry Corps and sent them on a far ranging wide flank move to the south that appeared to have the intent of closing off any Prussian retreat but before these forces could get behind the Prussians the French north attack fell like a hammer blow. Hesse-Homberg's division was flattened within 20 minutes as was von Boyen's, sent NW to support him, both Prussian brigades tumbling off their defensive ridge and running away to the SE to try and get to their escape route east to Wittenberg. von Bulow sent messengers to Clauswitz, sitting tight in Dessau town itself and Harppe who was holding the south flank to fall back. Clauswitz escaped east untroubled but Harppe had to hack his way out as the northern French attack surged south-east along the Prussian line.

The French then unleashed what felt like a tidal wave of cuirassier and dragoon squadrons into Hesse-Homberg and von Boyen, carrying all before them. Von Jagow of the Prussian cavalry bravely attempted to stem the tide and bough the hard pressed infantry some respite. The battle lasted only 90 minutes, 30 of those being the French approach before there was combat. Eventually the retreating Prussians were able to outrun their pursing cavalry and the French light cavalry of Bruyere was not able to close the distance and cut off the Prussians. If he had been able to put another mile and a half beneath his horses hooves, the whole of von Bulow's corps would likely have been captured.

The Prussian players all played magnificently but were overwhelmed by the I Cavalry Corps in full cry; there was nothing to stop them. I really enjoyed playing as one of the Prussian infantry divisions; its very exciting trying to extricate a command under relentless cavalry attack. I find you learn a lot more in such situations than when you win!

I understand the French cavalry players had a good game too.

Replay File.

In raw figures the French lost about 1,000 men, the Prussians about 4,000.

No worries! Couldn't find the topic with the new information until too late is all. Why is the old server still being hosted?

I am Ian Walls yes

Although I currently aren't able to play the SOWWL games I really enjoy reading the after action reports, thank you Digby! Even when "my side" (on the campaign) loses.

Maybe I can study these replay files, try and learn some tricks...

Sam, the old server is hosted by Ike and the group hasn't had contact with him for some time so it is not in our power to close it. A few months back Ike's server began to seem like it wasn't allocated enough bandwidth - we had all kinds of connections and drops problems with it so Mike Morse very kindly set up a new one for us.

Bravo! Excellently done chaps!