"Napoleonic tactical primer recommendations?" Topic

Hi there!

A friend of mine and I have gotten hooked on the combination of GDA2 and the Turner miniatures STLs, but neither of us has much grounding in period tactics. Most of what I know is hazily remembered from reading Nosworthy's With Musket, cannon and sword 20+ years ago.

Is there anything more recent/in sync with current scholarship that covers the same sort of ground (I.e. the tactical nuts and bolts of how combat in the period worked)? The Muir book seems promising but is limited to the British experience. Ideally, I'd like something the covers other combatants as well.

Thanks for any tips!
Ed

Muir and Noswrorthy are pretty good.

link

I've never heard of this one and I've read many of them: link

I've enjoyed the Osprey's Napoleonic tactics books. Prussians get one volume but others get a book like "light infantry tactics" or "cavalry tactics".

The combat series also has valuable titles like: "French Guardsman vs Russian Jaeger" which compare the capabilities of both formations. link

Cracking art if nothing else.

The Geoffrey Jukes one is excellent, as is Noseworthy. This is also very good

link

Agree that Nafziger's "Imperial Bayonets" is very good and a must read (thouugh you will need to reread multiple times as his style of writing is not the easiest to follow).

In my view "Battle Tactics of Napoleon And His Enemies" by Brent Nosworthy needs to be treated with a bit of caution – it is not up to the standard of his excellent earlier work "The Anatomy of Victory: Battle Tactics 1689-1763".

For Russia, the 2 volumes by Alexander Zhmodikov & Yuri Zhmodikov "Tactics of the Russian Army in the Napoleonic Wars"are a must.

Very cool! A few more things to add to the reading list.I can absolutely see how this is a very deep pit to fall into…

It is a deep read, but the single best reference you can buy as a grounding for everything that follows is The Background of Napoleonic Warfare by Robert Quimby.

You can save a bit of time by skimming the last half of the Mesnil-Durand chapter if you are amply satisfied with Quimby's well research points. But reading the whole thing cover to cover will really benefit you on everything that comes after.

As noted above, both volumes of the Zhmodikov books are also great, as is Imperial Bayonets.

@Flashman14 One problem with Jeffreys is that he had a hypothesis to prove, that French small scale tactics gave them a lead in the early period and then the allies caught up. To support this he relies on drill books and ignores the practical actual operations. 7 Years war historians will tell you that things he says the Prussians didn't do in 1800, they were doing in 1760.

Go for Colin and Béraud (series of 3 volumes)

Nafziger comitted some severe mistakes, as for the French, instead of using the manuals in use, he treaty by Meunier which was not intruced, for example the French infantry manoeuvred at pas accelere and not pas de charge as Nafziger suggests.

@wtjcom – Since the Quimby is priced at $4.99 USD for the kindle version, that's a no brainer. Thanks!

@von Winterfeldt- what is the title of the Colin and Beraud volumes? My google-fu is weak…

@ von Winterfeldt I'd advise being wary of putting too much reliance on just manuals, they tend to be written after the event, troops in the field get inventive during a real shooting war the manual gets updated later. That certainly seems to have applied to the English civil War. Or sometimes the manual isn't updated because the sort of officer who writes manuals is a desk jockey and has never seen action so he poo-poos the reports from the battlefield and insists on the 'office' version of war. I suspect the British infantry manual post the AWI fits this bill and I know that one of my WW2 regimental officers caused a lot of upset when he was invalided home to a training unit because he taught what the regiment were doing in combat and this didn't suit the base wallahs so they decided he must even more ill than they thought and sent him on gardening leave.