End of Salzwedel Campaign

Battles fought during Salzwedel campaign

The campaign provided eight battles to wargame.

The French won five, and the Prussians three

However it was not as one sided as the numbers would indicate

The three Prussian victories were spread throughout the campaign

Their last victory seemed to turn the tide against the French

However a daring attack on Salzwedel won the campaign for Napoleon

Campaign Notes

Eight battles in ten days is a pretty busy campaign

It also provided a lot of interesting problems of supply for both armies.    
These are not obvious for anyone following the campaign diary.  

The record keeping is pretty simple for the campaign.   
 It is all controlled on the computer using Excel.    
There are three pages for each day. 

First page is orders and supply situation for both armies

Each corps has simple orders move, halt, hold or attack

Supply is shown against each corps as start, use, new, left

Second page is French order of battle

Shows full strength for each brigade and any casualties

Third page is Allied order of battle

Also full strength for each brigade and any casualties

I start by updating supplies and delete previous orders

Next write orders for defender

Then orders for attacker

The current supply for each corps dictates what they can do

The maximum is four days, and if they have more than one day no problem

But if they are down to just one day they urgently need to resupply

If they run out they will lose attrition casualties (10% of one brigade for each day)

If they are in supply, and have the opportunity to attack, I then check current strength.   
 I check the strength for both sides, and decide whether either is too weak to fight.   
 If that is the case I change their orders to hold or retreat.   
 There is no point in playing a wargame where one side is going to retreat on move one.

Because of the almost constant fighting the supply problems were great in this campaign.
That, more than the frequent battles, made for an interesting campaign.