Dipping my toes into Napoleonics

With a thunderous Vive l’Empereur the French grenadiers charged into the Russian 1st Line infantry, who were trying to regroup in the woods. They surprised the unfortunate Russians and hit them in their flank, while getting support fire from the voltigeurs, who followed them into the woods. The French elite infantry allowed none of their opponents to leave the forest alive…

The French cuirassiers found themselves surrounded and decided to do a final charge against the Russian square before them. The French 2nd Line infantry attempted to give them some supporting fire, but they were too reduced in numbers to do any real damage. The Russian square did what it was trained to do and mercilessly cut down the last of the French cuirassiers. The Polish line infantry, seeing the Russian cuirassiers line up, hastily moved into the woods, where the cavalry could not reach them.

With the Russian left having fallen, the Russians re-alligned their artillery to guard their new flank. Their cuirassiers moved behind the lines to counter the threat posed by the opposing chasseurs.

1. Wow, charging cavalry into a square formation is truly a bad idea! The defender gets to shoot with all bases AND gets a save, which is a 2+ at 3 to 4 bases remaining!
2. Then I was wondering whether you are allowed to shoot into close combat, since the rules mention nothing explicitly concerning this. I’ve mostly done so, since I interpret any shooting as happening just before or after a charge. Also, close combat always ends with one side moving away, so I tend to imagine that somewhere around the close combat fighting a volley is fired into the enemy. Interestingly, the rules do specifically allow shooting before or after a move (even though the shooting phase comes after the movement fase, so I’m not sure how that is supposed to go exactly). So there are clues, but no hard facts.