Friday 9 January 2009

The next battle: Peterdohna (september 1813)

This is a fictional battle fought between the Russo-Prussian contingent of the Army of Bohemia led, respectively, by Wittgenstein and Kleist under the Barclay's command, against the French St-Cyr's XIV and Lobau's I Corps supported by Mortier's Young Guard and Lefevbre-Desnouttes's I Cavalry Corps, commanded by Napoleon himself.
After the battles of Dresden, Kulm and the Katzbach, there was an interlude in the southern front. Schwarzenberg and Napoleon played a 'cat and mouse' game, with the first trying to traverse the Bohemian Mountain passes -hoping to turn the Napoleon's flank or rearguard- whereas Napoleon tried to catch him. During the month of September of 1813, both contenders went all over the net-road in the Dresden-Pirna-Dohna-Peterswalde area, but the strict following of the Trachenberg plan by the Allied, avoided the clash.
This Scenario covers a 'what if', with Napoleon closing at last the trap around the Allied, in a fictional site named Peterdohna : Peterswalde + Dohna. The OOB’s and the narrative have been taken from
Nafziger G. 'Napoleon at Leipzig. The Battle of Nations 1813', The Emperor Press, Chicago, 1996
Petre, FL 'Napoleon's Last Campaign in Germany, 1813', J. Lane, 1912
Zucker, K. '1813. The Year that doomed the Empire'. OSG, 2007
and the maps from Google Earth, Google Maps and the
3rd Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary.
The Scenario will be designed for 'normal' Napoleon's Battles

4 comments:

  1. Rafa - sounds like fun. St Cyr is one of my favourites as I played him in a re-fight of Dresden many years ago. The French lost of course...

    Ian

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  2. The scenario is very 'green' still. I must to decide the forces in the table and the sequence of reinforcements sequence

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  3. Looking forward to the first playtest.

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  4. I am refining the OOB, taking into account the losses suffered in the battles of Kulm and dresden

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