The Hagelberg AAR

At last I wrote the after action report (AAR) for the refight of Hagelberg using Lasalle. It can be viewed in the main site Battle of Hagelberg
The Scenario is bigger than a typical Lasalle combat, but it runned smoothly since the battle can be considered as composed by three different, and almost independent combats, fought respectively in the flanks and central section of the battlefield.
The combat in the French left flank was almost equilibrated in numbers. Four French and two Westphalian batallions were fronted by seven Prussian batallions, one cavalry squadron and one howitzer. Four of the seven Prussian infantry units were Landwehr, i.e. unpredictable units, which after the first combat resulted 'Shaky' so the overall quality of both sides was similar, with a slight advantage for the Allied (4 vs. 3 'Reliable' units). The Allied also counted during the first movements of the battle with the help of a full French foot battery, deployed in their right flank on a hill.

The fight in this sector was very fierce, and finished with the Prussian rout. The Prussian losses were four infantry batallions and the cavalry squadron. The French only suffered one infantry batallion broken, and they were allowed to leave the battlefield almost unmolested. Additionally, their succesful fight also allowed an easy retreat for all the French baggage train and the two full artillery complement (two batteries).
In the central section the fight was different. Girard (French C-i-C) had devised an in-depth defence, with a Croat batallion garrisoning a lone farm covering the only bridge, and also placed light infantry to dispute the Prussian cross of the stream.
However, the Prussian numerical superiority in this sector resulted in a complete Allied rout: five of their six Infantry batallions where broken, by none of the Prussians! The fighting retreat devised by Girard reasulted actually in an aniquilation battle. One of the Prussian Landwehr units, the 3/6th Kurkmark Landwehr was the 'heroic unit of the day' decisively contribution to the break of the Allied line (their unpredictable esprit transformed they into a 'Valiant' unit in the first combat).

The fight in the French right flank was a typical cavalry combat with a continuous ebb and flow. Units were winning and losing combats. The French had quality advantage over the Prussians ('Reliable' vs. 'Shaky' units) and finally managed to extricate, just in time, their Hussars and Chasseurs through the town of Hagelberg.

Due to the congested state of the battlefield, none of the C-i-C's and especially von Hirschfield, the Prussian General, made good use of his artillery: only one French battery was used although was almost inmediately limbered to avoid its capture.

Summarizing, the battle was a very interesting and enjoyable game. The battle concluded with the Allied (French and minor German) rout like in the real world. Their losses amounted to a 42% of their initial force, although they retained their full material (guns and baggage).
Lasalle is a good rule-set. I'll use it in the future to play minor engagements, that can be not well covered by Napoleon's Battles.
Remember you can access to more pictures at Battle of Hagelberg in the main web site.

Hagelberg is finished!

The Battle of Hagelberg, my first Lasalle game, has finished like in the real life, with the rout of the Girard's garrison of Magdeburg.

The Prussian Landwehr force commanded by Generalmajor von Hirschfield, has achieved a resounding victory, breaking 6 French batallions. The Sennegon's Brigade has been destroyed with only one batallion left (3/24th Legere). However, Girard has been able to extricate the Baville's brigade (only losoing one batallion) and all the artillery and baggage train. The French cavalry has fought a contested confrontation with the Landwehr cavalry, achieving a pyrric victory: now they are encircled by the enemy and their only escape way is through the town of Hagelberg, before that Prussian infantry finishes the occupation.
The Prussian losses have been lighter: 4 infantry batallions and one cavalry detachment.

Therefore, this Lasalle refight of Hagelberg has finished with a result similar to the actual. The final result of the 'divisional' Napoleon's Battles Hagelberg scenario was a marginal French victory, so it seems like Lasalle is best designed for this type of small scenarios than 'divisional' Napoleon's Battles, a modification of a grand tactical game... but the statistical sample is too small, an only battle, to extract a reliable conclusion.

As a general conclusion, Lasalle is a very good tactical rule set. The unusual sequence of game, forces you to think all your movements (mainly the leading to close combat), because the first step of your opponent will be to counteract them. In my opinion, Lasalle can be used also to fight historical scenarios, in which both sides are not well balanced.
I'll make a more detailed AAR for the main web site in the next days (Easter holidays in Spain!)

Hagelberg Lasalle update (II)

The battle of Hagelberg is near the end. The French are fighting back the outnumbering Prussians and it seems that Girard, the French commander, will finally achieve his goal: to disengage his Magdeburg division from the von Hirschfield's Prussians saving the baggage and artillery train.
The Prussian right flank, the Reuss detachment, has been fully routed losing 3 infantry batallions and a cavalry detachment, broken by the Baville's Brigade

The Prussians are also losing the cavalry battle in the opposite flank. The French Hussars and Chasseurs are having an upper hand over the Prussian Landwehr Cavalry, altough none unit has been broken... still.
However, the Prussian numbers could finally decide the issue, because the Prussian Putliz Brigade (6 infantry batallions) is trying to break the French center, dangerously approaching their 'Moral break' value, so watch this space!

Lise Meitner in the Ada Lovelace's day

The Ada Lovelace's Day is a blogging international day to draw attention to women excelling in technology (The Ada Lovelace Day). To take part, you must to choose a tech heroine and then publish a blog post, any time on Tuesday 24th March 2010. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), know today as Ada Lovelace, is mainly known for as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs for the early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Babbage's analytical engine.

This year, my heroine is Lise Meitner ( Vienna, Austria, November 7, 1878. Cambridge, England, October 27, 1968) was an Austrian-born, later Swedish physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1945, overlooking Lise Meitner, who collaborated with him in the discovery and gave the first theoretical explanation of the fission process.

Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee. A 1997 study concluded that Meitner's omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the Nobel.

Lise Meitner was the third of eight children of a Viennese Jewish family. In 1908, two of Lise's sisters became Catholics and she herself became a Protestant. While conscientious, these conversions counted for nothing after Hitler came to power. Owing to Austrian restrictions on female education, Lise Meitner only entered the University of Vienna in 1901. With Ludwig Boltzmann as her teacher, she learned quickly that physics was her calling.

Doctorate in hand, she went to Berlin in 1907 to study with Max Planck. She began to work with a chemist, Otto Hahn, she doing the physics and he the chemistry of radioactive substances. The collaboration continued for 30 years, each heading a section in Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Together and independently they achieved important results in the new field of nuclear physics, competing with Irène Curie, Frédéric Joliot, and other foreign groups.

In 1934, Enrico Fermi produced radioactive isotopes by neutron bombardment, coming to a puzzle only with uranium. There were several products; were any of them transuranic elements? Meitner drew Hahn and also Fritz Strassmann into a new collaboration to probe the possibilities. By 1938, the puzzle had only grown.

After the Anschluss (German annexation of Austria in March 1938), Lise Meitner had to emigrate. In the summer of 1938, she went to Manne Siegbahn's institute in Stockholm. Neither asked to join Siegbahn's group nor given the resources to form her own, she had laboratory space but no collaborators, equipment, or technical support, not even her own set of keys..." She corresponded with Hahn as he and Strassmann tried to identify their "transuranes."

On November 13, 1938, Hahn met secretly with Meitner in Copenhagen. At her suggestion, Hahn and Strassmann performed further tests on a uranium product they thought was radium. When they found that it was in fact barium, they published their results in Naturwissenschaften (January 6, 1939). Simultaneously, Meitner and Frisch explained (and named) nuclear fission, using Bohr's "liquid drop" model of the nucleus; their paper appeared in Nature (February 11, 1939). The proof of fission required Meitner's and Frisch's physical insight as much as the chemical findings of Hahn and Strassmann

But the separation of the former collaborators and Lise's scientific and actual exile led to the Nobel committee's failure to understand her part in the work. Later Hahn rationalized her exclusion and others buried her role ever deeper. The Nobel "mistake", never acknowledged, was partly rectified in 1966, when Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann were awarded the U.S. Fermi Prize.

In 1997, element 109 was named Meitnerium (Mt) in her honour.

No chemical element has received the name of her colleague Hahn.... poetic justice?

The siege of Astorga (march-april 1810)

The siege of Astorga of 21 March-22 April 1810 was a preliminary operation before the start of Masséna’s invasion of Portugal.

Astorga was located in the right flank of the French advance and was also a key point for any French campaign in Galicia. The town was built on the south eastern end of a steep hill and surrounded by medieval walls. La Romana (the Spanish general returned from Denmark with British help) repaired the walls and built outworks in a northern suburb on the hill and in northern and eastern suburbs at the base of the hill. At the start of 1810 the town contained a garrison 2,700 strong under the command of the Colonel José Santocildes and around 1,000 civilians.

The task to take Astorga was given to general Junot, Duke of Abrantes, commanding the 8th French Corps (21,000 infantry and 5,000 cavaley). Even lacking a proper siege train, Junot was determined to begin the siege of Astorga without delay, and the town was invested on 21 March.

The French decided to attack the northern corner of the walls, close to the cathedral (significant sections of the wall still survive in this area). For the first three weeks of the siege the French could do very little to damage the walls, but they used the time to build up their gun batteries and siege works in preparation for the arrival of the guns.

Santocildes conducted an active defence, launching a number of sorties against the French trenches, but his only real hope was the arrival of a Galician army. Unfortunately only 5,000 men arrived, a not big enough army to lift the French siege.

The first French siege guns arrived on 15 April. Despite only consisting of four 24-pounders, one 16-pounder, four 12-pounders, eight 6-inch howitzers and one 6-inch mortar it was more than powerful enough to batter a hole in the medieval walls. By noon of 21 April a practical breach had been created in the northern corner of the walls. The Spanish were able to construct a second line of defence inside a damaged church, and turned down Junot’s summons to surrender.

On the afternoon of 21 April the French stormed the breach. Seven hundred men from the Irish Legion and the 47th of the Line managed to capture the breach and a nearby house built up against the wall, but they were unable to make any more progress, and after an hour the French took cover.

The next morning Santocildes surrendered. His men were running short of ammunition, and there was no chance of repulsing a second determined attack. The French captured 2,500 prisoners, but their success came at a heavy cost – in all Junot lost 160 dead and 400 wounded, most of them during the assault (113 dead and 294 wounded), while the Spanish only lost 51 dead and 109 wounded.

Extracted from Military History Encyclopedia on the Web

Hagelberg Lasalle update

I am playing Lasalle Hagelberg in my (scarce!) spare time. The game flows now smoothly once I am used to the unusual 'Sequence of play'. In Lasalle, 'React', 'Fire' and 'Combat' are resolved before 'Movement'.
Hagelberg is a running retreat. The outnumbered French are protecting their baggage and guns whereas trying to stop a Prussian force outflanking their left, to cut the baggage train.

By now is turn 14 and the French left (see above picture) is keeping the line by making local counter-attacks so the Prussian outflanking maneuver is failing. In the French center and right (see picture below), some French and Croatian batallions have been sacrified to stop the Prussian forces, that are now converging towards Hagelberg.

The coloured pins indicate dirsuption levels: green for one, orange for two and red for three.

First movements in Lasalle

I have starterd (at last!) my first Lasalle game, a version of Halgelberg scenario.
Prussian right wing is coming out from the woods whereas, the center and right wings are crossing the stream.
Frech are reacting, and the first artillery salvoes have made great carnage in the Prussian line infantry (Very good dice!)

Watch this space, because the Prussian tide is menacing to turn both French flanks!

Another wonderful Croebern actualization!

The team of the Croebern 1813 Project has updated the web site, with another set of wonderful pictures in the 'Dioramenbau' section (March, 7th)

I have not words to describe the amazing reality sensation produced by these pictures!

Go to the 'Dioramenbau' section of the Croebern 1813 Diorama site.
Be ready to wait some time to load all the pictures, go to the end of the section, and enjoy!

The new website of Newline Designs

NEWLINE DESIGNS the British manufacturer of 20 mm metal Napoleonic figures has re-designd its website.

To celebrate the launch they are offering a huge 20% off discount in all their ranges (excluding 20mm Bargain packs, 100 piece armies and WAB armies as these are already discounted). In addition if you spend £50 or more then P&P is capped: £5/UK, £10/EU and £15/RoW

See a picture of my Newline French Infantry in Greatcoats

Remember that Newline figures, being true 20 mm (measured from soil to eyes), are somewhat smaller than usual 1/72 figures (like HäT or AIRFIX). However, a small 'sabot' under the Newline bases eliminate this problem!

Find them at NEWLINE DESIGNS

The Ada Lovelace Day (Off-topics)

The Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited. Just sign the pledge and publish your blog post any time on Wednesday 24th March 2010.

“Who should I blog about?” . Here are a few thoughts to help you out:

■ you can write about any woman, be she alive or dead
■ the woman you choose to write about does not have to be famous — but she can
■ you can write about more than one woman if you like — or just about one
■ think of the women who have influenced or inspired you in some way or another throughout your life (teachers? family members? public figures? historical figures? friends? colleagues?)
■ “tech and science” is a pretty loose field, on purpose
■ if you are in the field of science or tech, look around you: are there women you know (or know of) who are not getting as much recognition as they would deserve?
■ your post doesn’t have to be about “the woman who most inspired me” or “my absolute top role-model, and she happens to be a woman” — go for “a woman who inspires me, or whom I admire”.

More information at the Ada Lovelace Day web site.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), know today as Ada Lovelace, is mainly known for as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs for the early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Babbage's analytical engine.

See my 2009 post about Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze, a.k.a. Madame Lavoisier