Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Look like bridge defense is too easily.
How many battle bridge have been destroying during battle?
How many bridge have been mining during battle?

in most of the case you could have 3 defenses line for a bridge, before the bridge, on the bridge and after.
always line before the bridge retreat on the bridge, even if there is an unit on the bridge.
unless you allow multiple infantry/cavalry melee you must do 3 different attack to pass the bridge.

all that are completely unrealistic.

In the series, which seems to favor the attacker, the bridge defense is difficult to bust but it can be done.

There are several bridge attacks in Napoleonic history that come to mind:

Lodi 1796 - the French attack into the teeth of the Austrian artillery and eventually take it after several assaults.

Landshut 1809 - the Austrians have to take a bridge to cross over the river and keep their advance going.

Ratisbon 1809 - the Austrians again have to take a bridge .....

Look at each of those and you will see that it did take time to take a bridge if it was aggressively defended.

In my games if someone tries to defend a bridge by being ON the bridge I just open up on that unit with artillery. Pretty soon it routs. If my opponent uses a "gamey" tactic of keeping a unit at the exit well there isn't much I can do about that. You could say that there was a "mob" on the bridge and that it was blocked to all traffic ...

But truly that is the one case where I think a House Rule could solve that problem. if the unit routs then the defending player cannot block the exit.

Other than that a bridge was hard to take if it was actively defended.

I am sure that other examples are there to be found ... the three I cite are some of the most famous. Oh add in Ebelsberg 1809 too ... sorry, forgot about one of the most heroic of them all. The French storm across a 300-400 meter bridge into a fortress-town no less! (Petre referred to Ebelsberg as one of the best defensive positions in Austria).

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Bill, In landshut scenario you was oblige to create Austrian behind Isar river to give a little chance to the Austrian to avoid a major defeat.

In Waterloo full scenario stating the 15, Cutshall/Hamilton was oblige to create a fictive 3rd column behind Sambre river to give a little chance to the french to take Charleroi.

in the two day scenario for Wagram, all the Austrian are fixed until the french have cross the Danube.

in all this case the designer scenario was oblige to create some subterfuge to give a chance to cross the bridge.

When conducting a river crossing against a well positioned defender it generally pays to bring up a lot of well positioned artillery which will inflict heavy losses on the opponent as he sits out a holds the ground.

Then this can be followed by a systematic operation using a a mixture of forces.
This is actually fairly historical

Salute!

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Marechal Knox

Prince d'Austerlitz et Comte d'Argentan
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

"What is history but a fable agreed upon"

sorry but what's interest of mixture of forces?
Cavalry could not charge and only one unit could cross a bridge !

so far nobody tell me in witch battle bridge have been destroyed