1813 Campaign Diary Blog

Map of europe showing campaign areas and phases

I normally have a new campaign ready to start before I finish the current one.   But over the past couple of months I have spent most of my available time working on new campaign maps.

I had anticipated the Linares Campaign to run for quite a bit longer.   It came to a swift end with the unexpected total defeat of the French army at Baylen.   This resulted in a lot of administration to wind down the campaign, leaving me with not a lot of time to set up the new one.

However all is well.  Over the past week I have completed the setup of the new campaign and am now ready to start.

With such a wide spread, and long running, campaign there is considerable “paperwork” to keep the five different campaign areas up to date.   This is particularly so with the campaign diary blog.

I wanted the campaign blog to be a record of the whole 1813 campaign.  I wanted to be able to read how the campaign was set up and what the national objectives were.  I also wanted it to have a record of each campaign phase, a daily diary and a wargame report for all battles fought.  It was also necessary to be able to check the latest situation in all five campaign areas, not just the current campaign phase.

To achieve this I used a detailed index to the blog using the Labels.   On the right of the blog there are 27 references listed. 

The first two deal with the overall 1813 campaign.  

01 is the introduction to the campaign

02 a description of the whole campaign area.

Each of the five campaign areas then has five reference, for example for Northern Germany they are

10 Introduction to the campaign in North Germany

11 French Army in North Germany

12 Prussian Army in North Germany

13 North Germany diary

14 North Germany battle reports

15 North Germany campaign summary

The last of these, the campaign summary, is what causes the most work at the end of the campaign.    This is a running commentary on the initial campaign objectives and a short history of each of the campaign phases.   It ends with a list of the blogs dealing with each aspect of the campaign.

The whole Campaign Diary Blog has taken on a life of its own.   I set it up originally to help new players in the PBEM campaign research their own campaign area.   But when I converted to a Solo campaign I realised I would need it myself to refresh my own memory when I started a new campaign phase.  

I sometimes wonder whether anyone actually looks at this complicated and time consuming blog other than myself.   I rather doubt if many do.   However it is worth the work involved to enable me to keep the campaign on the tracks.