In the face of this, General Victor would recall Murat back across the bridge behind him.
1000 hrs Little has occurred as GdK Melas is waiting for his army to be fully deployed before committing to an assault. Somehow in the morning confusion, the order to FML Kaim to deploy to Hadik's left was not sent soon enough so he continues to march on toward Castel Ceriolo. The Grenadiers are beginning to deploy and, not represented by miniatures, FML Ott's Left Wing would be trying to continue on down the Castel Ceriolo road to prepare for their assault against Lannes.
General Murat receives a request from General Victor to deploy to the right flank but Murat would send back reports of alarming events on his own flank that would result in those orders being cancelled.
For comparison purposes, this was the 1000 hrs situation in the previous week's fight at Marengo using Napoleon's Battles
Kaim would finally get two sets of orders at the same time, to engage the French to the left of Hadik. He chooses to interpret this as allowing him to deploy so as to not have the creek between his forces and the French.
1040 hrs With his batteries firing away and having limited effect on the French, Melas would begin sending out orders for all the elements of his command, other than the grenadiers, to launch assaults against the French to their front. The attack would commence all across the line at noon.
1140 hours. Still there has been little activity other than artillery fire. The French have ordered Gardanne to shift to the opposite flank to face Kaim across the creek but Kaim has no orders to advance. Frimont has begun to roll his artillery forward slightly.
At noon, only Hadik would launch over to the assault. The other divisions would be either not in receipt of their orders yet or still trying to coordinate themselves. Hadik orders his supporting cavalry to aid in the attack but neither can get across the creek before the front wave of infantry. Jellacic's regiment would scramble through the creek and engage the 43e Demi-brigade in a protracted firefight. One of Erz Anton's battalions, ordered to assist in the front wave, has great success driving back a French battalion but they would find the situation untenable there and so Hadik orders them to fall back to the second wave.
At 1220 hrs, Frimont launches his assault to try to take the bridge and Hadik's cavalry finally gets engaged. On the left, the Karaczay light dragoons are foiled by a well formed French square but on the right, where the French are caught up in a firefight, the men of the 43e demi-brigade would be driven back to their reformation area by the cavalry charge.
O'Reilly, meanwhile, found himself unable to execute his assault and so reverted to defend orders. Couriers are still en route to Kaim. The French were getting positive defense assessments and the Austrians were managing to keep up the fight without impetus.
The 1200 assault by the Austrians in our Napoleon's Battles game. Not much different really.
As a final note, in this picture from the NB game, imagine the position that our Kaim would have occupied. It got remarkably close to Lannes' Corps as it cross the bridge due to the late orders. Kaim at noon would be about where those dragoons are in this picture.
