Merkenwig, the Seventh!

With some skillful manoeuvering, the Wurstburp cavalry sweep past the newly discovered bog and head towards the Cassock irregulars. (Below) One of the Kurlandian regiments is on a hill; nevertheless, going full tilt and stirrups in, Pronounski is confident of victory! With the irregulars swept out of the way, the flank of the enemy infantry will be dreadfully exposed!

(Below) Despite their many advantages, and to Pronounski's great ire, the Wurstburpers are wursted! Both Margravial regiments fall back, the Kurlandian Cassock irregulars silent in amazement at their own performance. Grand Duchess Catherine, however, more than makes up for this, engaging in a strange dance, and cries of 'Yeah, you know it!', designed to goad the enemy commander. These efforts are really quite successful. 

(Below) There remains one last chance for Pronounski: a frontal assault upon the Kurlandian infantry line! The Wurstburp troops inch forwards to within musket range. Surely the Grand Duchy's infantry will fire a preliminary volley. But no! Due to a stratagem of Unpronounski, there is no firefight! The Wurstburp troops begin limbering up for their charge.

'Fear not!' cries Horace de Saxe to General Unpronounski. 'For I am as excellent a linguist as I am a strategist! I shall inspire the troops for this final climactic charge!'
'Please don't', says the general earnestly.
'But my Scottish vernacular is perfect!' cries de Saxe. 'Jimmy', he adds.
'Dear God, please, no ...' begs the general.
But it is too late - Horace is already off, speeding along in his carriage down the Wurstburp line!

'Men!' cries de Saxe to the Wurstburp troops. 'To be sure, if you fight, you may die, boyo! Run and you'll live, at least a while, sure it is. And dying in your beds many years from now, isn't it, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, by gum, for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, look you, but they'll never take our freedom!'
There is silence.
Then, one of the Wurstburp clansmen pipes up: 'Well, strictly speaking, when we were still in Scotland, we were tied by both duty and custom to a quasi-feudal system of hierarchy and power in which, as tenant farmers, our freedom actually was substantially curtailed by duties and obligations owed to our lairds and landowners'. 'Jimmy', he adds.
De Saxe considers this for a moment. 'Charge!' he then yells. 'Just ... move on!' he shouts.

(Above) With loud war cries earnestly expressing their desire for greater latitude within what is still likely to remain a top-down compliance-based social and economic system, the Wurstburp clansmen rush forwards to their destiny! Victory or death!

Merkenwig, the Sixth!

As the Wurstburp left-wing wheels in retrograde to try and meet the threat from the enemy, the Kurlandian cavalry receive new orders. These orders are not to their commander Boris Katsonov's liking. This isn't a surprise, because the orders instruct him to wait three days for the arrival of Grigori Savvinos, who will then take him out to lunch. Alas, Savvinos has been multi-tasking in his role as Grand Duchess Catherine's chief of staff. Writing one missive to Katsonov with his new orders, and another to his mother laying out the arrangements for her birthday, he has inadvertently swapped the messages. 

For most other Mittelheim cavalry, an invitation to halt for a couple of days on the battlefield and then have someone else pay for lunch would seem like a perfectly reasonable request from higher command. But Katsonov is having none of it. In the heat of the battle, he wants nothing more than to get to grips with the enemy - even an enemy as dirty as the Wurstburpers. So, he orders one of his units into a rash frontal assault upon the enemy (below)!

As a military enterprise, it is an attack that rates higher for its optimism than it does for its pragmatism. The Wurstburpers actually much prefer hand-to-hand combat to firing (or bathing), and the chance to head-butt some horses just increases the fun from their perspective. 

(Above) The outcome is predictable, and the Kurlandian horsemen are driven back in disorder. They are not happy. Although. on balance, they are probably happier than Grigori Savvinos' mother, who will be receiving a letter from her son instructing her immediately to work her way around the flank of the nearest Wurstburpers and rush on them from behind. This is by anyone's standards a poor way of celebrating one's birthday .

As the Kurlandian cavalry take the opportunity to retrograde even further in order to evade enemy musket fire, General Pronounski decides that it is time to try and seize back the initiative.  The initiative, however, seems to have been frustratingly lubed up by the Kurlandians with the very slippiest of lard. The general orders up his right-flank cavalry. His aim is to thrash the Cassock irregulars off the hill to his front, and then menace the Kurlandian infantry, as preparation for a wild charge by his infantry.

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(Above) Alas, as happens so often during battles in Mittelheim, there manifests suddenly a strange laxity in map reading. A large and hitherto unseen marsh appears suddenly in front of the Kurlandian cavalry. To the sound of unmanly tittering from the Cassocks, the initiative slips with a plop from Unpronounski grasping hands.

(Above) The Kurlandian sniggering is short-lived, however. Displaying a flexibility more often associated with Mittelheim moral scruples than with the manoeuvres of their cavalry arm, the Wurstburp horse form into mass. The tittering amongst the Cassock irregular cavalry stops. Having reduced their frontage, the enemy can now not only pass the bog, but they will be in an even better position to charge in upon the Kurlandian flank!

Merkenwig, the Fifth!

With his infantry in disarray and his flanks under threat, Pronounski orders his infantry to retire beyond enemy musket range hoping, no doubt, to restore some order to them before recommencing the attack. That sound that you can hear is probably the sound of the Wurstburp initiative flouncing noisily out of the room in a huff.

(Above) The infantry lines of the respective armies are now out of the range of small arms: although some of the longer arms on the more monkey-like of the Wurstburp troops could probably reach out and grasp their opponents - those that have opposable thumbs, that is. 

(Below) Though regular combat may not be on the menu now, there remains for those troops that wish to vex their adversaries a choice from a long list of activities that encompass such tried and tested Mittleheim military tactics as taunts, jests, thumb-nosing, ear-waggling, aspersions upon the possession of fathers, suggestions as to the nocturnal proclivities of mothers, ditties implying non-church-sanctioned relationships with various farmyard animals, songs surrounding the surprisingly close relationships between the latter and immediate family members, and various colourful versions of songs concerned with milkmaids or other female agricultural workers that hail from such places as Venus or China.   

Grand Duchess Catherine seems really to be getting the hang of this generalship thing. For the most part, it seems only to require that one makes rational choices and avoids falling asleep. Deciding that following up the retreating Wurstburpers would weaken the strength of her position, she instead orders her regular cavalry to continue their menacing canter and close the distance with the Wurstburp infantry.

(Below) There's nothing that Mittleheim cavalry like more than an exposed enemy flank: unless, that is, the exposed flank also comes with an all-you-can-eat sausage buffet. No sausages on this flank, sadly, but quite a few turnips instead. The Wurstburp infantry look nervously to their left wondering what this is all about. Are these horsemen enemy horsemen? Or are they friendly forces? If they were the latter, of course, then they would be facing in the wrong direction. However, facing in the wrong direction is not, in itself, compelling evidence that they are not Wurstburp cavalry.

 'I think that things are going splendidly for us!' says Horace de Saxe enthusiastically. Pronounski groans: Horace's enthusiastic approval is surely the clearest sign yet of the dangerous precipice of disaster that looms in front of the Margravial forces.

Merkenwig, the Fourth!

A volley of musket fire issues forth from the Kurlandian line! Three of the leading enemy units are roughly handled by musketry. The Wurstburp reply consists of the usual cavalcade of Mittelheim feckery. They inflict some casualties, but no decisive damage is done. Alas, their love of  weapons that chop, maim, and tickle at close quarters means that their effectiveness in a firefight is much reduced. This is not an army that is likely to win a fair exchange of volleys and they are still well out of head-butting range.

Unpronounski realises that he has made a tactical mistake. Much to Horace's surprise this is not any pachyderm-related perils. (Below) He could order his troops to charge and give them what they excel at: bloody violence at close quarters. But because his cavalry has been left so far behind, he would leave his flank exposed to the depredations of the Cassock irregulars. And there's nothing the Cassock's like more than a good flank to sink their teeth into.

Whilst Pronounski cogitates, ruminating upon his options, Horace speeds off along the line in an attempt to rally the disrupted infantry. This has the predictable consequences, since de Saxe lacks any of the things necessary to improve the morale of the obdurate Jacobite porridge-gobblers: whisky; deep-fried confectionary; tales of English sporting failure; or an opportunity to punch one another at someone else's wedding. The Wurstburp lines remain gloomily disrupted.  

(Above) The Grand Duchess Catherine may be inexperienced in war but she is also not burdened by a pudding-brained, four-wheeled waste of space like de Saxe as an advisor. Sensing that the Wurstburpers are faltering she decides to seize the initiative! Orders are despatched, and the Kurlandian regular cavalry begin to move from their position on the hill. Beginning to wheel, their target is obvious: the flank of the advancing enemy line! Surely the Wurstburpers' goose is cooked (a process that in Wurstburp would require stuffing the goose with haggis, boiling it in Iron Brew, and then throwing it away) ...