Marshal Kutuzov has finally reached the river Saale in the Halle campaign. Neustadt is a small town on the east bank of the River Saale between Saafeld and Greiz. It is unoccupied at present, but both sides are racing to take possession.
This first wargame of the campaign was a hard fought one, with the town changing hands many times and the game in dispute right to the last move.
Despite my best efforts, Jan (and the Russians) won and the French lost their best chance of outflanking the Russian position from the south.
You can read the battle report by clicking on 1813 Halle Campaign on the right.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Forum has been very quiet for a few weeks. The membership is pretty good, but no one seems to want to post. It was very busy for the first couple of weeks, then it just seemed to dry up.
I did a poll to see what experience members had of campaigning, hoping that I might find an aspect which would interest them. However less than half even bothered to vote! In fact the one response I got was from someone who said that they never took part in polls which were intended to create new subjects!
I started the forum because doing a blog can be a lonely business. For me, the blog is similar to keeping a diary - which I have also done for many years. With the big difference that you are inviting strangers to read it. In the nature of a blog, there is little feedback. And when there is there is no opportunity to expand it into an exchange of views. That is the reason that I started the forum.
Most of the forums that I look at are about a rule system, or general subjects like TMP. There seemed to be a gap in that campaigns were seldom mentioned. On the rare occasion when I did raise it on TMP, it might get one or two replies and then disappear. And when I suggested starting a forum just for Napoleonic campaigning there was a lot of support. And indeed the membership if 160 plus, which should be plenty for an active exchange of views.
The problem is that they are mostly "lurkers", meaning members who read the posts but do not contribute. I did try to encourage them, but met with no response.
I hope that it will not just die from lack of interest, but I feel it easily could. I have put five or six posts on recently about starting a campaign, and used my own Magdeburg as the example. There has not been a single response on the forum. Yet each day I put one on, with a link to the Magdeburg Campaign on the blog, I get about 20 hits on the blog. So I assume that most of them have come from the forum.
I have checked the other forum I use, and find that most of them are also going through a quiet patch. Perhaps its the time of year. But I know that if I visit a forum each week and find nothing new, I give up and move on.
I guess that time will tell whether there is enough interest to keep it going.
If you would like to see what it is all about you can find it at:
The French counter attack in last years 1813 campaign has failed at the battles of Horst and Buckholz, but now it is the turn of the Imperial Garde, and they win the day. But at heavy cost. And due to the earlier defeats the Garde will also have to retreat towards Hannover.
You can read the battle report by clicking on "Wargames in Spain" on the right.
The last day of our Holts Battlefield tour to Portugal and Spain was spent in Madrid. For a brief description and a summary of the weeks tour click on Walking Napoleonic Battlefields on the right.
The Russian army under the command of Marshal Kutuzov has finally agreed to take the offensive and are marching from Dresden to the river Saale to support the Prussians in the north.
Napoleon only has two corps on the river Saale, with a third in reserve. However the Imperial Garde is now fully up to strength and he is ready to take the offensive.
The Halle campaign is about to start.
Starting tomorrow the daily march orders and daily campaign diary will be updated each day.
You can read the campaign background, plus photos and orbats of both armies by clicking on the 1813 Halle Campaign button on the right.
Life as Napoleon is proving much more difficult that I had imagined. The campaign is now three weeks old, but only three campaign days old, and already the "fog of war" is threatening to overwhelm the French war effort!
The first day/week was uneventful. I sent out orders and assumed that they would be obeyed. The campaign routine was that I send Napoleon's orders to the umpire, who then sends them to the wing/corps commander players. They write orders for their corps and send them back to the umpire, with a copy to me. The umpire sends back to the players a summary of what they have learned, and they send me a report based on that summary. A day later the umpire (in his role as Berthier) sends me a map showing approximate corps locations at the end of the day and a summary of any intelligence received.
On the second week/day I issued orders for the next campaign day. When I received the wing commanders orders to their corps commander it was obvious that they were not where they should have been according to the map I had received from the umpire. A flurry of email between players and umpire resulted in a change in the reporting system. In future I would send orders direct to wing commanders.
Another week/day and the confusion had become worse. The umpire informed me that two of the cavalry corps were unfit for service for 48 hours. When I asked the cavalry corps commander why, he did not know! Another flurry of emails.
I have no idea how life like all of this might be. Certainly it recreates the "fog of war", but it produces such a lot of frustration. Three days into the 1806 campaign would Murat really have told Napoleon that he had no idea what was wrong with his two unfit cavalry divisions because their commanders had not informed him?
Anyway an interesting, if very frustrating and time consuming, exercise in Napoleonic command and control. And it has made me appreciate my own simple campaign system which is designed to give me nothing more than good wargames.
I will keep you informed of how the 1806 campaign proceeds.
The latest battle report is another in the 1813 campaign which we played last year. The Prussians are moving on Hamburg and the French are making a series of local counter attacks in a futile attempt to stop them.
You can read the battle report by clicking on the "Battles in Spain" button on the right.
