France-Prussia maxi-battle

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henri51
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Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:07 pm

France-Prussia maxi-battle

Post by henri51 »

In this battle, my French in the 1805 scenario had 170,000 men and the Prussians had a bit fewer.

As Talleyrand came into Napoleon's tent, Napoleon slapped the girl on the backside and showed her out.

Talleyrand smiled wryly:The last thing that France needs, he thought, is an Emperor who is in a bad mood due to lack of sex.In a few hours the Grande armee would meet the Prussians in one of the biggest battles of History, after having successfully defeated and having obtained surrender treaties from the Swedes, the Russians and the Austrians, and the Emperor would need all the good humor he could muster. Unfortunately the treaties with the Swedes and the Russians did not yield any territories to France, since they had no territories adjacent to any French provinces, but at least none of them would be making any alliances with the British for the next year.

The Grande Armee II was too far away to intervene, and anyway it would be required for the war against the Hessians, who stood in the road to Prussia and who refused to give the French rights of passage. "We need an excuse to take out the Hessians", said Napoleon. "We will say that they have weapons of mass destruction!", replied Talleyrand, "after all, it is not reasonable for any [font="Trebuchet MS"]trou de cul[/font] nation to have the same weapons that we have, is it? Notwithstanding the fact that it is we who have sold it to them...", smiled Talleyrand.

"You are really a piece of shit in a silk stocking", laughed Napoleon, but I couldn't get along without you...Now let me get ready for the battle", as his Marechaux began to stream in.

The Grande Armee had been a bit banged up by the previous battles with Austria,so few divisions were full-strength, and the ratio of artillery and cavalry to infantry was a bit off. Napoleon had only 2 artillery divisions, and the Armee was top-heavy with cavalry thanks to Ney's reserve cavalry corps.On the other hand, thanks to the successive victories against the Swedes, Russians and Austrians, morale was sky-high, and morale was better than soldiers, so Napoleon was not too worried.

Scouts had reported some Prussians down the road, and Napoleon moved to meet them. The terrain was uneven with many hills making fast movement difficult, but Napoleon was the master of maneuver. On the other hand, with only two artillery divisions, badly placed artillery could be a problem.

The cavalry fanned out and a heavy cavalry screen led the way down the main road, with the main French infantry, artillery and supplies strung out behind the cavalry. Smaller groups of cavalry and infantry spread out on both flanks.Their role would be to carry out a flanking attack or to prevent one from the enemy. Napoleon knew that no plan survived contact with the enemy, but he intended to use his main force to fix the enemy forces and to use the other forces to pressure the enemy flanks. The Prussians were defending their territory against the tough veteran French Grande Armee, so they were expected to be arrayed in a defensive position. Although they would not make the Russian mistake of having the army led by the militarily incompetent king as the Russians did at Austerlitz, they would attempt to maintain a flexible deployment, which is difficult to do in difficult terrain, especially against a mobile army like Napoleon's.

The cavalry screen spotted the Prussians arrayed mostly behind a river, with a few scattered outposts on the flanks, and their dispositions favoring the defence of their static objectives. The French cavalry screen on the main road wheeled left to face the center of the Prussian line, with the cannons and enough cavalry and infantry to defend them following behind. The French left wing, consisting mostly of cavalry met a Prussian outpost, and quickly began to overwhelm it, while on the other flank, a large Prussian infantry force supported by some cavalry became visible. The French were outnumbered two-to-one of their right flank, which meant that the Prussians on the French left flank would be weak.

One of the two artillery divisions was dispatched to the French left flank while the other artillery with the main force of cavalry and artillery approached the Prussian river line and began to exchange fire. The plan now was to roll up the left flank before the Prussians could properly defend it, which would expose the whole river line to annihilation. This was favored by the hills close to the Prussian right flank, which prevented units on the river line to see what was going on on their far right flank.

Ney, who was commanding the French right flank, did not have to wait for any orders from Napoleon: he immediately began to assault the Prussian superior force on his flank to keep their attention and perhaps to convince them that the main French attack would come from that quarter. On the other flank, Davout did not need instructions either, and he immediately saw that he had the advantage, but only for a limited time. He quickly concentrated his forces on one after another of the Prussian forces on the French left flank, following Napoleon's dogma that the key to success was to take on the enemy piecemeal.

Now the battle would be decided by the following factors: how fast could the Prussians react to the threat on their right flank? How long could Ney on the other flank delay the massive Prussian forces there? How well could the central French forces keep the main Prussian force fixed in place along the river? If the Prussians could hold their right flank until dark, the night would give them time to redeploy and the French could forget about rolling up any flank. "I can lose a battle, but I cannot lose a second", Napoleon had told his marshalls before the battle, emphasizing the importance of time and speed.The French has most of the afternoon to carry out their plan.

It took some time for the Prussians to react. After some hesitation they realized that they had a decisive advantage over Ney's force on their left flank, and they threw their superior force upon Ney, hoping to break through and to carry out a flanking attack of their own upon the French. But as the Prussian commander began to realize that his right flank was collapsing, he ordered a holding action on that flank and a shift of forces from his left flank to his right. Unfortunately few of the units on the river line were free to disengage from their defensive positions, his orders took time to reach the troops, and contradictory orders within a short time led to some confusion. Ney knew in advance that this would happen, and when he saw that the Prussians were shifting their forces, he threw everything he had at them to delay them as much as possible. Three horses were shot from under him, and at one point he found himself completely surrounded by enemies, but the French morale held and every one of his soldiers followed his example and fought tooth and nail.

On the other flank, Davout gradually forged through, and as darkness began to fall, the right end of the Prussian river line found themselves under fire from two directions. The units defending the Prussian flank had fought courageously, but now they began to break and rout. As the first one routed, the morale of the next one broke and it also routed. There followed a chain reaction as the Prussian morale plummeted, and the units moving right from the Prussian left flank found themselves mixed in a maelstrom of routing and fighting units.

On Ney's flank, the remaining Prussian units were confused by what they saw and units became disorganized and all cohesion between units was lost. Ney exploited this by concentrating his forces on one or two Prussian units at a time, and very soon, units began to rout on this flank too.

Now the whole Prussian army lost cohesion and it was every man for himself. The rout was a massacre.

The next morning, a disheveled Ney with a bloody and torn uniform gave the final result to his Emperor. "Forty thousand Prussian casualties and only six thousand French!And a Prussian envoy is waiting with a surrender offer...", he said. "Now that we have forced the Swedes, the Russians, the Austrians and the Prussians to surrender, we are the masters of Europe. Now we can have peace and go on with our mission of civilizing Europe", he crowed.

"Not so fast, interrupted Napoleon. Although the British are in no position to bring an army to the mainland, they still control the seas. Our allies the Spaniards are getting a bit too big for their boots, and you can bet your last pair of boots that within a year, we will again be at war with every major nation of Europe. These Feudal dinosaurs know that we are a threat to their power, and they will go to any lengths to prevent the French enlightened rejection of Feudalism to succeed. So we will use time to bring the small nations of Europe under our protection, by force if necessary, while we prepare for the next war. We will have peace only when my brothers and marshalls are sitting on every throne in Europe, thus completing my destiny to bring French enlightenment to all of Europe."

"Ney smiled: "In other words, we keep our powder dry and use an iron fist in a velvet glove...by the way, the Kingdom of Sweden might interest me, but not Moscow!"

Napoleon laughed and began to write the terms of the treaty.

Henri



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