"Wertingen 1805 " Topic

"One of the opening battles of the 1805 Ulm envelopment, the strategic coup that virtually eliminated the Austrian field army at the beginning of the war and the first act of the Austerlitz campaign. Wertingen was a relatively small engagement but notable as the first test between the newly trained and re-organized Grande Armee of Napoleon and the veteran but also recently re-organized army of the Hapsburgs.Though most military historians classify this as an "action" or a "combat" rather than a "battle", it involved several thousand troops and resulted in the deaths of hundreds (who were probably not concerned with the finer points of historical classification). I've decided to add this battle/combat/action/skirmish to my collection because of its interesting features. In the same way, just because Pluto is no longer regarded as a full-fledged planet doesn't make it less interesting as an object of study.

THE STRATEGIC SITUATION

The Austrians under Karl Mack von Lieberich had moved their forces to the southwest, invading the French ally Bavaria. Mack's intent was to seize and concentrate around the major city, Ulm, but his forces were widely scattered and communications sporadic.

After enjoying a successful career as primarily a quartermaster officer, Mack owed his appointment to the de-facto command of the Austrian field army mostly to political string-pulling. But his authority was from the start ill defined. He was vigorously criticized by the General Staff and his subordinate commanders as having stuck his neck out too far in moving the army so far west. He was also guilty of believing what he wanted to believe and ignoring tangible and increasingly alarming intelligence reports of the actual French movements to the north and east of him. He was also prone to firing off impulsive, confusing, and contradictory orders to his corps commanders, not helping the situation…"

More here
link

Anyone have wargame this battle?

Amicalement
Armand

Hello Armand!

In 2005 we gamed ever major battle of the campaign. There were no surprises beyond the historical outcomes. As you can see Auffenberg is in a hopeless position. We have now played this battle twice and the French have won both times. I'm inclined to play it again and have our strongest players on the Austrian side, but I'm not optimistic that anything will change. The Austrians only chance is to withdraw at once, but that would be using hindsight and of course there would be no battle.

Best regards,

Glenn

Our scenario for the battle of Wertingen 1805 link:

link

Really nice!

Thanks boys!.

Anyone tried a crossing of the Zusambach direct to Geratshofen…? (Austrian Army).

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand

If you'll revisit, you'll notice I just redid the maps and the OOBs on this article. I've always been bothered by the aesthetic of both when I originally made them back in 2013. I also recently found I had made some errors in troop positions.

One of the things I did, in revising the look of the map, was turn the foliage to fall colors (it was early autumn, after all). We don't know, of course, that by 8 October 1805 the trees had turned. But we do know that the earth's climate was cooler during this period known as "The Little Ice Age" and that contemporary reports of just days later remarked that it had started to snow. So it was colder, and that would have been sensed by the trees.