I want to take a little bit of a break from fighting AWI campaign battles and travel back to Europe to fight some tricorn era battles, namely the Charles Grant scenario for Fontenoy. I will be trying out one of the two Grant scenarios for Fontenoy in his book, „Wargaming in History – Volume 2 – Dettingen, Fontenoy and Lauffeld.“  I plan to fight the scenario „The Whole Battle“ but leave out the Dutch contingent and their attack from the left wing of the Duke of Cumberland’s Pragmatic Army. The book also presents a smaller scenario called, „The Infernal Column“

Since I do not have any British or French Minden figures painted, I will have to use the Grant devise of substituting other nations‘ figures for those of the actual forces in the battle. Grant pere and fils use this mechanism frequently in their battles and so I plan to do the same, using my Minden Prussians for the British and my Minden Austrians for the French.

The tabletop layout that I am using is shown in the two pictures below. The Austrians are defending a ridge that provides some dead ground that will hide their troops from the view of the Prussians. Anchoring the Austrian left flank is the Berry Wood and the Redoubt d’Eu. The woods is teaming with Croat light infantry (substituting for the Arquebusiers de Grassin) that will pose a tactical problem for any attackers.

The Austrian center is manned by two battalions of elite grenadiers and four more musketeer battalions. All of the Austrian cavalry backs up the Austrian center.

Anchoring the Austrian right flank is the fortified town of Fontenoy.

Here are several views of the town of Fontenoy. The Austrians have spent considerable time improving the defenses of the town with entrenchments and abatis. The town may hold up to three battalions of infantry.

Maurice de Saxe devised the cunning plan to draw the Prussians into a battle on ground of his choosing. He expects the Prussians to attack straight up the middle, so he has created a number of little surprises for the attacker. As the attacker marches into the center of the Austrian line, he will find that his troops are subject to an enfilading fire from the artillery positioned in the Redoubt d’Eu and from the town of Fontenoy. Light infantry in the Berry Wood will also pepper the Prussian soldiers in the right flank as they march towards the center.

The Prussian deployment is fairly straight forward – they will simply attack in the center and hope that might of arms will force a break through of the Austrian center and win the battle. The Prussians have placed their best infantry – the Guards, in the center along with four battalions of musketeers.

I plan on playing Fontenoy as a solo game over the coming weekend and I will post a lot of pictures of the battle as part of the post game report of the action.

So what do you think, does this look like fun?