Sacile battle - Black Powder March 13, 2022

Last Sunday my friends organized a battle between an Austrian and a Franco-Italian army. The battle has taken them four hours and has involved five of my club mates: Giancarlo and Luca (Austrians) vs Luciano, Nevio and Giuseppe (French army). Ezio has followed the battle as a kind of judge.

They have decided to use 15mm miniatures. The minis are part of Riccardo, Ezio, Luca and Luciano collection

The battle they have fought was ispired to Sacile battle (also  known as battle of Fontana Fredda). It tooks place in Italy near Livenza river not very far from Sacile modern town. It was part of the Napoloenic wars ... more exatcly the Fifth Coalition campaign.

In April 1809 Archduke John of Austria invaded Veneto (northeastern italy). On April 15 , at Pordenonte, the Austrian advance guard routed the French rear guard and, the following day, Eugene de Beauharnais (Franco-Italian leader) decided to attack the Austrians east of Sacile. 

French forces are coming on battle field ...

Both in the real battle and the our match the two armies had an equal number of foot soldiers. Below some Austrian attempt to reply to French's attack

The Italian troops advance

At the end ... as well as in the real battle ... the difference was created by Austrian cavalry 

In the history the battle was a strategical Austrian win. The Franco-Italian army suffered 3,000 killed, two colors and 19 guns fell into the hands of Austrians.

Eugene was forced to withdraw his army 130 kilometers to a more defendible position at Verona. At the end of April, news of French victories near the Danuble caused John to fall back to his country with Eugene in pursuit.

Also in our game ... after a lot of turns ... Austrians win the fight.

Zulu army structure - Zulu wars March 2022

My friend Ezio painted a lot of miniatures for Anglo-Zulu war ... I took some pictures of his fantastic minis.

The organization of the Zulu army was profoundly different to its professional British counterpart. The army was a part-time citizen militia.  Its structure was based on a system of age-based regiments called amabutho (sing. Ibutho).  

Every two years the King summoned all the young people of the county who had reached eighteenth or nineteenth years age and created with them an Ibutho. Each Ibutho had a different name, a different uniform ... a combination of feathers and furs with a specific shield color scheme. These young men would remain in the King's service until their marriage.

After the marriage the soldier entered directly into the service of the royal family.

By the time of the Zulu War the number of regiments were (probably) 34 divided between married and unmarried ... Around 40,000 .... 50,000 men.

Skirmishing skills were extremely good.

Unlike the British forces, the Zulu army required few transports. Three or four days’ provisions consisting of maize or millet and a herd of beef cattle accompanied each regiment.

The standard Zulu battle formation resembled a crescent shape with two flanks moving to encircle the enemy. This formation, called "horns of the bull" had been developed over hundreds of years when hunting large herds of game.

Modern warfare - March 2022

During a Milano Wargame ... a couple of years ago ... I bought some Caesar miniatures box. I painted some of them with a vegetated camouflage and wrote some posts. 

Last month I started to paint again some minis I had in the boxes and I had not prepared

This time I decided for a desertic uniform

In my opinion Caesar sculpting is very good. Poses are dinamic and well designed ... below some special ops in action

Some snipers and special weapon 

Caesar built also some drone teams ... they were included into German army box but the OTAN' uniforms are similar

I painted also some M2A3 Bradley and some M1 Abrams