ESR (Et Sans Résultat!) 1809 Wargame Battle Report

French and Austrian Troops begin to deploy

Dear Reader,

Today, I wanted to offer a wargaming battle report. A few weeks ago, the designer of Et sans résultat!, David Enteness, and I played a short game of his excellent ruleset. Although the game is set in the Napoleonic era, David hopes to someday expand his ruleset and miniatures sales into the Seven Years' War era.  I will describe the battle, and then offer a few thoughts on the ruleset. You can find these rules, published by The Wargaming Company, on their website, here.

Battle Report:

A few notes on the scenario. Based on the uniforms and ratings of forces involved, this was a battle between 1 Austrian and 1 French army corps, in 1809. Both forces had around 20,000 men, and entered from opposite sides of the table, as you can see from the map below. Both commanders were trying to make way for larger forces by driving the enemy off the table.

The French (Blue lines) axis of advance was from the west, (top of the map) while the Austrians (White lines) advanced from the east. Both players started with an initial force on the table (an advance guard and infantry division) with one additional element arriving each turn. The French, under Jean-Baptiste Bessières, moved forward in an effort to seize Huelsendorf. The Austrians, under Johann Karl, Freiherr von Hiller, moved their avant garde forward, while trying to seize high ground north-east of Fuerstenwald.

von Hiller hurries an Austrian column towards high ground north of the Fuerstenwald

The Austrians attempted to control the high ground in the north-east quadrant of the battlefield, while the French rushed forward to take possession of the town and surrounding terrain.

State of affairs after one turn of movement. 

The Austrian avant-garde deployed, rushing a 6-pound battery and uhlans forward, as Grenzers moved up as fast as they could. The French, moving at a more stately pace, still managed to concentrate their chasseurs à cheval and an infantry division around Huelsendorf.

French Cavalry crosses a bridge, while the Austrian Avant-Garde struggles to deploy

The picture above shows the view from the western (French) side of the table. The Austrian advance forces quickly realized that a whole French infantry division was deploying in their front, and sought the cover of the woods. As more French infantry moved up, von Hiller moved one infantry division into position on a ridge behind the Fuerstenwald.  Bessières began to mass more French infantry around Hueslendorf, but as a result of confused orders, a large infantry division became lost on its way to the battlefield, losing about 1 hour's marching time.

Both generals bring more forces towards the fight. 

Von Hiller moved one infantry division from the south side of the Kunersbusch marsh to the north side, directly across from the town of Hueslendorf. The main Austrian force concentrated around the Fuerstenwald, with the French forming opposite, near the town. Faced with an entire Austrian infantry division, the French avant-garde chasseurs à cheval retired in good order through the town. While Bessières brought up his second infantry division and a division of Cuirassiers, the recently redeployed Austrian infantry division formed up to assault the town. The situation at this stage of the battle is depicted below.  Click on the image below for higher resolution/clearer labels.

At this critical junction, von Hiller (yours truly) decided that the moment had come to assault the town. Radetzky's division, formed up alongside the avant-garde, as pictured above, was ordered to attack the town. The Austrian infantry moved up, taking fire from French skirmishers posted in the houses. At this critical juncture, with battalions of Austrian infantry moving to contact, General Radetzky, the Austrian division commander, fell from the saddle, killed by a bad roll, err, Tirailleur's ball. Though inflicting some damage on their French opponents, the Austrian infantry fell back after a brief combat, reforming 1,000 yards away from town.

The Austrian attack on Huelsendorf stalls, while another French division moves forward

Even worse, at the same moment, the delayed French infantry division appeared directly across the marsh from Huelsendorf, and General Morand began deploying the 4eme de Ligne. Colonel Vincent of the 3rd Ferdinand Hussars, seeing French infantry deploying to his front, faced a stark choice: fall back, allowing French yet another infantry division to commit to the fight, or charge with 5 squadrons against a full French infantry division. Being a colonel of hussars, Vincent, of course, decided to convert onto an attack order, and charge.

Colonel Vincent charges a partially deployed French Infantry Division

Colonel Vincent's five squadrons were handily turned aside by two battalions of the 4eme de Ligne, but crashed into the third, routing it. The battalion streamed along the rest of the ployed division, shouting, "sauve qui peut!" This was too much for the division, which pulled back to defensive positions outside of the hussars' reach. The hussars themselves, being quite depleted by this rash attack, were only too happy to see them go. Both the hussars and the infantry formed, and spent the next hour in desultory probing with no clear advantage. While the charge of the 3rd Ferdinand Hussars had inflicted little real damage on the French, it made Colonel Vincent's reputation, and from then on young ladies took to their smelling salts whenever he narrowed his eyes.

With Marmond's infantry division reforming, von Hiller decided that the moment to strike had come. A detached force of Austrian Chevaulegers and Grenadiers (pictured above) assaulted across the Kunersbusch, towards the rear of the town. At the same time, a large column of Austrian grenadiers assaulted towards the French left, and von Hiller took personal command of the final fresh Austrian infantry division, marching towards the French center.

By keeping French forces occupied in the town, the Austrian mixed detachment was able to keep some of the French infantry pinned in the town. The French cuirassier brigade, backed away from grenadiers, not wanting to charge fresh infantry while unsupported. Meanwhile, the infantry under von Hiller's personal command slammed into French center. The fighting between the center infantry divisions was heavy, with neither side gaining a clear advantage.

The Austrian grenadiers continued to advance, leaving the cuirassier brigade with little choice but to attack. The Austrians began to gain an advantage in the contest between the two infantry divisions, while the French cuirassier suffered horribly in their charge against the grenadiers  The French infantry managed to clearly repulse the mixed detachment of grenadiers and Chevaulegers, but the damage was already done.

With the cuirassier brigade pushed to the other side of the river in confused retreat, the Austrian grenadiers threatened to cut the French line of withdrawal. Bessières pulled his troops out of Huelsendorf, leaving the Austrians as masters of the field. The two sides had suffered a roughly equal amount of damage up until the later turns, when the disastrous attack by the cuirassiers began. All in all, von Hiller had achieved a solid, though not complete, victory over Bessières. This battle represented around five-six hours combat between two corps and took two players about four hours of play time to complete. For more photos of the game, check out The Wargaming Company's photo gallery.  You can also watch my review of the miniatures from the same company on youtube.

Ruleset Review:

These rules provide an interesting window into the Napoleonic era. The turns are broken down into 4 phases: Command (Blue) Movement (Green) Artillery and Skirmish (Purple) Combat (Red). Or, to put it another way, turns are spent planning objectives and performing special actions, moving and deploying forces, and inflicting damage on enemy formations. In this game, you force your enemy to flee by causing him to perform, "assessments," something like a division-wide morale check. The more "fatigue" (combat attrition) a formation suffers, the more likely it is that they would have to perform an assessment. You can find a link to the quick-reference sheet here.

In this game, we used small orange dice to track fatigue

As I will discuss below, this is very much a game about leaders. A general can perform any number of useful actions at the beginning of a turn (or game) but as the game continues, formations which suffer fatigue will become less responsive to actions. Likewise, as the game continues, it is more and more likely that a general will become bogged down and trapped in a formation which has suffered a great deal of fatigue.

 As the rules and The Wargaming Company website repeatedly state, this is a perspective-based wargame. Some wargame rulesets allow you to be Blücher, Ney, Bagration, Beckwith, O'Hare, and Riflemen Harris. That is to say, they allow you to command at the army, corps, division, regiment, company, and individual levels. Et sans résultat! is uncompromising in its commitment to deliver the best experience on one of those levels: that of a high-level commander. Whether you are commanding at the army, corps, or division level, that is scale of play. You are not interested in flanking the enemy's battalion, you are interested in flanking his division or corps.

In that sense, ESR is firmly perspective-based wargame fought on the grand tactical scale. If your favorite part of gaming is wrecking an enemy battalion, this game is probably not for you. On the other hand, if you want a realistic window into the type of decisions which troops commanders actually had to make. As a result, the experience of the game is quite different from other wargames I have played. Practically, what does this mean?

Troops begin ployed (in marching column) on the table's edges, commanders are left to develop the battle on their own. As opposed to many games, which plan for combat on turn 1 or 2, around a third of the game time was devoted to moving troops to the appointed positions on the battlefield. While this may sound like a drawback, in reality, much of the job of Kabinettskriege or Napoleonic general was accomplished before the first shot was fired. Et sans résultat! firmly demonstrates this to the player.

In ESR, generals are concerned with pressing things at their level of responsibility: committing and recalling artillery batteries to the fight, energetically deploying extra units from line into column, weighing the importance of personal intervention at crisis points on the battlefield, and forming new ad-hoc formations in order to plug gaps in the line. Your mileage may vary, but as a military historian focusing on this era, I found ESR to be incredibly compelling and enjoyable as a game system.

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Thanks for Reading,



Alex Burns