Background
The Battle of Vitebsk, sometimes spelled Witepsk, was a military engagement that took place on 26 and 27 July 1812 during the French invasion of Russia. The battle put a French force, under the command of Emperor Napoleon I, in combat with Russian rearguard forces under General Petr Konovnitsyn (on 26 July) and Peter von der Pahlen (on 27 July) and ended with the Russian forces making a strategic retreat from the battlefield.
The battle occurred as Napoleon was trying to envelop the Russian First Army at Vitebsk and force them to accept battle. The commander of the Russian First Army, General Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, was himself aiming to fight and thus massed the bulk of his forces at Vitebsk, even though he was aware that his chances to win against Napoleon were not good. Barclay’s motivation to make a stand resulted from political pressures and from his own desire to improve the army’s morale, after weeks of retreating without a fight.
The fighting on 26 July had General Konovnitsyn’s rearguard division fighting elements of the French IV Corps and ended with the Russians managing to delay the enemy for the entire day, allowing the bulk of the army to mass at Vitebsk. Meanwhile, Barclay received intelligence that Pyotr Bagration’s Second Army had been defeated three days earlier, which meant that Barclay was forced to abandon his plan to fight a major action against Napoleon.
Barclay’s main concern for the day of 27 July was to keep the French at bay for long enough, in order to allow his main force to escape towards Smolensk, where he planned to unite with Bagration. The task of delaying the French was assigned to General Pahlen, who succeeded in frustrating any French breakthrough attempts for half a day, before Napoleon decided to stop the fighting and wait for reinforcements, convinced that he would be able to renew battle the next day.
Unbeknownst to Napoleon, the Russian army retreated during the afternoon and night, which meant that the Emperor’s plans for a major battle collapsed. Meanwhile, the Russian army made a hasty retreat and safely reached Smolensk, where they were able to unite with Bagration, just as planned.
The Battle of Vitebsk was in fact no more than a rearguard combat and French casualties, some 400 dead, 900 wounded and 70 captured, were relatively light. The French lost Colonel Liédot, a distinguished officer, commander of the general staff of the army’s military engineer corps, who was killed in action. Russian losses amounted to some 3,000 men, killed and wounded. Their main strategic goal, namely to fight a delaying action aimed at allowing the army to retreat unmolested, was achieved.
General Pahlen received high praise for this action from an otherwise reserved Barclay de Tolly. The battle is often seen by French historians as a missed opportunity for Napoleon, who failed to press Pahlen hard and thus render the Russian retreat difficult. Indeed, Napoleon took for granted the fact that the Russians would fight the next day and stopped his attack early on, unwilling to risk high losses against an enemy who vastly outnumbered the forces that he had available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vitebsk_(1812)
The Game
The game was set up using the historical order of battle, with the terrain matching the available battlefield maps. We are fans of Et Sans Resultant rules. However, we have had challenges running afternoon games with those rules. Generally, this is do to how the individual combats work in the game. As such, we have been bouncing some ideas around with simplifying those combats to speed up the game. In this game, we tried a version that basically used the rules as written modifiers (with a few changes) and applied that to a singe 2D6 roll (instead of rolling for each battalion individually). While this still required the game master to run the combats, it did allow for a much faster resolution and ensured the game was finished well within our normal play period.
Both sides were in position to deploy quickly and get into fighting. The Russians had a fixed set up based on their historical positions. The French had the option of using a flank march as part of their attack. However, the French commander opted to “go up the middle” and power their way through. As such, the fight was very straight forward with both sides colliding in battle lines and bringing the battle to a swift conclusion. While the Russians were able to do considerable damage to the French, they could not stand up to the assault and finally broke. The result was a historical French victory, but much bloodier!
– Manteuffel