Nightfall at Jena
Napoleon has lost the Gera campaign!
After two days fighting at Jena the French have suffered a crushing
defeat.
The French have now suffered four major defeats, including
the surrender of 2nd corps, and Napoleon has ordered a general
retreat.
Of the seven battles fought the French have lost five and
drawn two. Not one of Napoleon’s best
campaigns!
By the end of the
second day’s fighting at Jena the French had lost four of their twelve
divisions. The Russians had lost two of
their twelve.
Both armies started the campaign with 52,000 men.
The French lost 18,600
The Russians lost 9,500
Despite the above the French had fought a clever campaign,
and had kept the Russians guessing right to the end.
The biggest mistake was to fight three battles on day one
when the whole army attempted to cross the river Saale at the same time. They lost all three battles, and one of the
three corps was forced to surrender in attempting to cross back to the west
bank.
The French never really recovered from this setback.
The river Saale was a very strong defensive position, and by
reorganising his three division corps into two divisions each Napoleon managed
to hold the whole length. However each
of his two divisions was opposed by three Russian divisions.
Finally the arrival, and deployment, of the Russian reserve
corps provided Wittgenstein, the Russian CinC, with unbeatable odds.
Despite the run of French defeats each battle provided Jan
and I with an interesting wargame, and often a very close fought one.
At five months the campaign was slightly longer than I would
have wished. There were long periods of
inactivity between battles, caused by reorganising and resupply, which some players may have found boring? But I would rate it as the most enjoyable
PBEM so far.
The full battle report for Jena Day Two will appear on the campaign
diary blog in the next day or two.
A summary of the whole campaign, with maps showing daily
locations, will follow shortly
You can find the campaign diary blog here
The next phase of the 1813 campaign will be set in North West Spain and will be the Anglo-Spanish attempt
to take that city.
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