On 10-11 January 1871 – 144 years ago this week – the battle of Le Mans was fought between 60,000 Germans and Chanzy's 80,000-strong 2nd Army of the Loire. This is one of those neglected battles whose large size deserves more attention from us wargamers than it generally receives.
Scenario map:
FPW9 Le Mans map by
bbbchrisp, on Flickr
Chanzy had retreated from river line to river line. At the Huisne, in front of Le Mans, he was obliged to stand and fight seriously. His army was exhausted but well dug in. In wargame terms, there is only so much entertainment to be had from frontal assaults on entrenchments. Fortunately, the flank of Chanzy's line was vulnerable to the approach of two German divisions from the NE. For this scenario, I therefore defined the battlefield to include space for their attack and create some options for the players.
As this battle is about holding a river line, I made the objectives for victory focus on river crossings. Often, wargame scenarios about river crossings are at risk of being rather dull and limited because they focus on just one or two bridges or fords. The scale of this battle protects it from that problem as it encompasses 10 significant bridges, of which I made 7 (or the villages next to them) into objectives.
Representing the state of Chanzy's force is important. Not only were most of his troops poor quality to start with, some of them had suffered particularly badly in covering actions in the preceding couple of days. His order of battle therefore makes full use of a range of BBB ratings: Raw, Fragile, Passive, Disrupted, Spent (one unlucky unit being all of the above!). The French army was not entirely useless dross, though, and the Papal Zouaves again covered themselves in glory.
This scenario has consistently produced close, tense, exciting games.
PDF of my map is available from the files of the BBB Yahoo group here:
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Le Mans, looking up the French line from the SW. Germans approaching from middle right:
26 Le Mans by
bbbchrisp, on Flickr
Chris
Bloody Big BATTLES!
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finds bridges to match the river sets.
