Come and have a go then .... April 1759
so the first two weeks were a continuation of March. Trying to slip away with the French, get the Russians across Poland with a minimum of supply problems and the Austrians into the hills south of Prina.
Also my recruitment activities in Austria are slowly paying off. Here's 6 battalions slowly moving from Hungary and Croatia (so effectively another 2 brigades)
and rather welcomely not too much happened, I drive a small Prussian advance guard off at Dippolswade and put most of the Austrian-Bavarian force into defense (with hold at all costs orders) just south of Prina.
My gamble is that the hills+5 corps (so around 110,000)+Daun offsets my NM malus.
so here's France in late April. I've more or less pulled off my retreat (which is very good news), Cumberland seems enticed by Frankfurt (maybe he bought a RyanAir ticket and is confused as to where he is?), and as an act of some aggression, I'm using a cavalry brigade to hit a loan Prussian supply wagon at Dortmund.
I think I'll try a bit of this hit and run stuff, loss of a few Hussar units is not too bad and if I can gobble up supply wagons or isolated battalions it all helps in the longer term.
yep, thank you very much and now we're off back to the Rhine ...
so things are happening in the wider war, none of them good for me, Kiel will fall at some stage (I'd rather it didn't but there is nothing to do about it)
and the Austro-Prussian front has reached a stand off:
For the moment I'm content with this. I can't attack Freddie (not least I'll never get the entire army on the move at the same time), looks like he's too prudent (or scared ... I mean who has ever heard of a scared big shark?) to attack me. Till I burn off the NM malus, I'm pretty content with this.
My fear that the Prussians would attack my fortresses on the east flank haven't been realised yet. So given how bad it looked in Feb, it now seems as if:
a) France will get the chance to recover, if Cumberland is after Frankfurt at the moment he can have it;
b) a bit of a stand off between Austria and Prussia, again at the moment this is good as it means no significant Prussian forces are
c) contesting the Russian advance. Even if all I do is to take Stettin and let the cossacks play with matches, that is some gain out of the year.
Now the wee concern with (c) is that Keith has disappeared. He's either resting before sieging Koenigratz or Olmutz, asleep (after all Charles has still never become active again), or, worryingly on his way North. He'd be badly outnumbered by the Russians but they are not the best troops nor particularly well led, so he could well stall that entire attack.