Heavy fog prevails through the early morning hours. Brunswick advances despite his disordered cavalry sitting behind him near Poppel, which are yet to recover from their earlier drubbing at the hands of French elements. He elects to use the woods to secure his left.

Davout’s forces move out of the woods and form line. The 29^th and 35^th Ligne [line] attack the flank of Gudin’s 3^rd Division regiment the 95^th line. They exchange Defensive and Offensive fire. The Prussian fire is ineffective but the French are on target and inflict a step loss.

Other fires disorder Brunswicks elements and they retreat with a step loss also.

As the Prussians close to melee the mists heighten the tensions no doubt.

COMBAT: [PR have 9 steps attacking total from the two units. This is multiplied by the Melee Value (MV=2). A total of 18 strength. The French similarly have 14 7×2. This yields a 1:1 attack with no DRMS.

The result calls for both sides to lose a step and both will need to execute a morale check. The Morale is the green number, which is modified for the losses downwards. PR roll an 9 meaning their attack becomes disordered, and they retreat two hexes. The FR have their morale adjusted by 1 also for their loss but manage to roll underneath the value and they stand to.]

A second disorder would eliminate the Prussians or we can use an optional rule to allow for Rout, which moves them full movement away and stakes much longer to recover. The two marker place on the PR unit represents the turn number that they incurred the disorder. Once the Rally phase in a turn is 2 or more greater than that marker we can roll for recovery [morale check]. Losses are figured by check mark on a sheet. I simply stack a marker underneath each conter in smaller battles such as this.

Start of Turn 4. 0930

The French now shift their line to the left towards the hill, and look to flank the Prussians as more French units arrive to fill the line, both Cav and Inf are arriving from III Corps.

Gudin closes to attack the 1^st column on the flank. Defensive and offensive fires are exchanged.

Once again the Prussians roll poorly, and retreat from the fires. The l’Ordre mixte [using a combined Line/Column in a stack] French miss the chance for a one two punch in melee as the column element would provide an attacker +ve DRM.

I am not certain that the Prussian cavalry could have taken a shot at a Charge/Counter Charge? – I believe counters are only against other Cav. I also believe but have yet to find it that they could possible do some form of reaction move to the FR infantry moving adjacent. Given melee is optional the French stand to and await further instruction. In the Prussian turn they cant charge at this close range, and will suffer opportunity fire upon leaving. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to ‘react’ as they see the slower French advance and retire at least one hex?