Background
The Battle of Piave River was fought on 8 May 1809 between the Franco-Italian army under the command of Eugène de Beauharnais and an Austrian army led by Archduke John of Austria. The Austrian commander made a stand behind the Piave River but he suffered a defeat at the hands of his numerically superior foes. The combat took place near Nervesa della Battaglia, Italy during the War of the Fifth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars.
The initial Austrian invasion of Venetia succeeded in driving the Franco-Italian defenders back to Verona. At the beginning of May, news of Austrian defeats in Bavaria and inferiority in numbers caused Archduke John to begin retreating to the northeast. When he heard that his enemies were crossing the Piave, the Austrian commander turned back to give battle, intending to slow Eugène’s pursuit of his army.
Eugène ordered his vanguard across the river early in the morning. It soon ran into vigorous Austrian resistance, but the arrival of French cavalry stabilized the situation by mid-morning. Rapidly rising waters hampered the buildup of French infantry reinforcements and prevented a significant portion of Eugène’s army from crossing at all. In the late afternoon, Eugène launched his main attack which turned John’s left flank and finally overran his main line of defense. Damaged but not destroyed, the Austrians continued their withdrawal into Carinthia (in modern-day Austria) and Carniola (in modern-day Slovenia).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Piave_River_(1809)
The Game
We opted to play the game using Sam Mustafa’s Blucher rules. We thought the rules would be easy enough to finish a battle of this size in an afternoon. We set up the game using a scenario we found on the oldmeldrumwargamesgroup blog. This is a very nice site for those of you that like playing Napoleonic battles using Blucher rules. The table was set up using the maps provided. We did add farm fields with irrigation ditches to the table to represent the terrain that existed on the actual battlefield. In order not to slow things down too much, crossing a field boundary just reduced movement by one inch (simple or complex moves). The set up was based on the scenario instructions. As the assigned game master (me) arrived a little late, the players just set up their troops without hidden deployment.
Early Game – The Austrians quickly deployed their infantry forces along the stream, while sending their cavalry to protect their left flank. The French quickly advanced their forward troops to engage the Austrians and break into the stream position. The quick French advance allowed them to cross the dikes and get into position to strike the Austrians, but doing so with inferior numbers. The Austrians made a few local counter attacks on exposed French units to varying levels of success.
Mid Game – Seeing that the French forward forces were far ahead of their reserves and exposed. Knowing that the river level was rising and the French reserves would be slowed, gave the perfect opening. The Austrians decided to go onto the attack and try to crush the French engaged units before help could arrive. These attacks were successful in pushing the French back and inflicting casualties on a number of French brigades. The attacks also forced the French to abandon their left flank positions and fall back to the center (with Austrians in close pursuit). However, the attacks could not land a decisive blow and turned into a bit of a battle of attrition (which the Austrians could not afford, having the smaller army).
Late Game – The French seeing the error of their ways opted to just hold the line and focus on getting their follow on forces across the river and into the fight. The Austrians pushed forward with local attacks to keep the pressure on the French. With more French infantry coming forward from the left to strengthen the French center, the Austrians committed their cavalry reserve to blunt the advance. Unfortunately, the Austrian cavalry did not attack with enough elan (poor die rolling) and was repelled by the exposed French forces. Seeing the threat, the French prepared their units and engaged in long range fire with the Austrian cavalry. This pretty much stopped any hope of the Austrian cavalry being able to have a decisive effect. As the cavalry started to go onto the defense, the French forces attacked up the middle with their newly arrived forces. Lead by the Italian Guard, the French forces were able to break into the Austrian positions and finally break the Austrian army. It was a grinding affair, with both sides taking losses, but the superior number of forces finally turned the tide in favor of the French. As such, the game ended as a historical French victory.
– Manteuffel