Wednesday 14 April 2010

Zahna: the next Lasalle battle

After the succesful re-fighting of the battle of Hagelberg, this time is the turn of Zahna. Fought the 4th of September of 1813, Zahna was a sort of prelude to the battle of Dennewitz.
The Oudinot's French-Bavarian XII Corps (part of the Ney's Army of Berlin) encountered the Tauentzien's Prussian Corps. The actual battle reduced to a French demostration (only five battalions were engaged) that forced the Prussians to retire towards the Bernadotte's Army of the North. Two days later, the battle of Dennewitz would ends the Ney's advance against Berlin.
The battle is described in the Nafziger's book 'Napoleon at Dresden. The Battles of August 1813' (The Emperor Press, Chicago, 1994), and there is an
OOB for that battle in the Nafziger collection, that was recently donated to and uploaded to the U.S. Combined Arms Research Library (See this post). The above map has been found in The Napoleon-Series site.
Whereas the actual engaged forces were very small, the Nafziger's OOB is too big so I have taken an intermediate position to re-fight the battle as a Lasalle wargame: I'll use the French Liberation lists of the Lasalle ruleset, as a guide to find the number of battalions and batteries available to the French. After I'll adjust the Prussian forces to balance the engaged forces.

My acknowledgements to my good friend Armand d'Arc: he suggested me this little battle.

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