"Elchingen 1805 " Topic
7 Posts
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Tango01 | 29 Jun 2015 11:06 p.m. PST |
""This, the fourth and final, small battle prior to the surrender of the Austrians at Ulm in the Austerlitz Campaign, is a puzzling one. That it was a French victory was pretty certain. In fact, Napoleon was so pleased with Marshal Ney's performance in it that he gave him a title for the victory, le Duc d'Elchingen. But why it was a French victory was not so clear. If you read the narratives it seems as though, at the outset, the Austrians had all the advantages; initial superior numbers of both infantry and cavalry, and a strong position on the high ground overlooking a marshy river crossing with a single, narrow bridge (one span of which had been burned). They also had two strong points to anchor their flanks, the villages of Ober- and Unter-Elchingen. But they folded, and fairly soon (the battle was over by early afternoon). And this after only a fraction of Ney's forces had hit them. It was like one of those football games where one team just knows it's going to lose, and so proceeds to lie down and wait for the inevitable. What I want to explore in this post is why the Austrians, with all their tactical advantages, still buckled. Were you to play a wargame of it, the Austrian player should always win (unless it was one of those wargames where the rules are artificially stacked in favor of the historical winners). All he would need to do would be to cover the Danube crossing with a crossfire of artillery and infantry and chew up the French as they attempted to repair the wooden bridges. Part of it, in my opinion, is just the result of bad leadership, specifically of General Mack again (see my previous posts, Wertingen, Haslach-Jungingen, and Günzburg). It is a study of how loss of confidence, not in one's abilities but in one's leaders, can cause a fiasco. The disaster for the Austrians came from the top down, not through any inherent weakness on the part of the fighting men…" From main page link
Hope you enjoy! Amicalement Armand |
AUXILIAPAL | 29 Jun 2015 11:37 p.m. PST |
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rxpjks1 | 30 Jun 2015 6:35 a.m. PST |
Locally we replayed this battle and the French won. The Austrian commander in Unter-Elchingen would not leave his position so the French players concentrated and destroyed the Left flank. There was a quality difference as well, as the French player had much better troops. |
RICHARD HENSLEY | 30 Jun 2015 7:04 a.m. PST |
Check out what Frederick the Great said about defending river line positions. Bottom line: if the opposing commander is competent, it (opposing a river crossing) is a losing proposition. |
von Winterfeldt | 30 Jun 2015 7:25 a.m. PST |
I was there several times as well, the maps are a bit misleading it was quite a short but steep rise from the valley up to the plateau – I am still impressed by the fighting capabilites of the French army then. I even climbed the wall surrounding the cloiter and had a look at the "Ney Loch" |
Tango01 | 30 Jun 2015 10:16 a.m. PST |
Glad you enjoyed it boys!. I (sane) envy you Von Winterfeldt! (smile) Amicalement Armand |
nsolomon99 | 30 Jun 2015 10:25 p.m. PST |
Toured this battlefield in the Summer of 98. Its immediately obvious that, even allowing for the river to have moved its main channel in the 20 years since, the Austrians defended too far back. They gave the French way too much space to debouch across the river and deploy. The slope where the main body of the Austrians were deployed is too steep, even today, to be a useful base for firing or fighting. Even French skirmishers fighting on that slope would've struggled. Once the 6th Legere had taken the town and fought their way up the main street and into the Abbey the whole Austrian position was compromised. The town of Ober-Elchingen is the key to the whole position, once the river line has been breached. A map showing the contour lines is important to understanding this battle. |
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