Back to the table (1)

Well, after an interlude for sickness, house hunting & acquisition, and moving, back to a second test of BAR:

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The sodden infantry of the CRC squinted, pulled their tricornes closer over their eyes, and scowled into the rain as it dashed against their faces. After the beating they took at La Follet, when the miserable Arvergnards left them in the lurch, they counted themselves lucky to have hats and muskets, and to be alive to retreat from the field.

General Green sniff forlornly at his snuff - as drenched as everything in this wretched army. Behind him, he knew, the Icenians, or their leash-holders the Kruppfalzen, were hot on the trail, and he blessed whatever stars had kept their fiendish cavalry off his back so far - abandoning the wagon trains and artillery seemed like a stroke of brilliance now, despite all the arguments. Still, it wouldn't be long before they caught up, and it behooved him to find somewhere for his squelching troops to make a stand, and try to dry their powder.

Up ahead he could see a low ridge, with the road leading into the pitiful hamlet of, of, of ... some blasted Allemannic craphole, he cursed under his breath. Dienstleutenberg, if he didnt misremember. Rapping his wooden leg* for luck, he sent a runner to Brigadier Teague, directing him to post his remaining few 6 pounders on the ridge, with the Algonquin infantry covering to either side of it, and send the Green Mountain boys into the copse nearby to avoid insult to that flank. He squinted behind him .... somewhere back behind the curtain of rain, there was Bickle's brigade of brash New Hullers, hopefully somewhat intact: the raw Janelanders were probably all dispersed, those that had escaped the dreadful sabres of the damned Cuirassier charge.


After an hour resting on the ridge, and watching the rain recede, his troops had managed to dry out somewhat, and the first of Bickle's men were visible down the road, the seedy and shaky Schiphol Rifles in the van. Peering through Colonel Roosfelt's telescope, he could see more thick columns looming behind Bickle, rather ominously close. He sent a runner to Bickle, directing him to form up in front of the ridgeline the Algonquins were posing on, and to send the riflemen to reinforce the Green Mountain rifles in holding the woods.




* His favoured weapon in battle, this was a leg his father had wrenched off an Arvergnian Colonel in the assault on Schellenburg 50 years earlier, and he carried it strapped to his saddle when not waving it vigorously to encourage his men.

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