"1809 books french-austrian campaign" Topic

Having the books about the 1809 campaigns against Austria by Chandler, Arnold, John Gill, Bowden and various Osprey's, which other books are recommended?

While we're on the subject, what's the difference between the two Arnold books, Napoleon Conquers Austria and Crisis on the Danube?

Crisis on the Danube covers the first half of the campaign around Ratisbon.

Napoleon Conquers Austria covers Essling and Wagram.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Jan,

I would get Rothenberg's last book, The Emperor's Last Victory.

Epstein's Prince Eugene at War is excellent and covers his campaign in Italy and up through Austria.

Eysturlid's excellent The Formative Influences, Theories, and Campaigns of the ARchduke Carl of Austria is one you don't want to miss. It isn't exclusively about the 1809 campaign, and only covers the Ratisbon phase of that campaign in a fourteen page chapter. However, it is a solid work and the emphasis is on Charles and how he made war. This is a must for any student of the period.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Kevin whats wrong with Rothenberg's Napoleon's Great Adversary?

Raducci,
Nothing at all. Can't believe I missed that one. ;-)

It's an excellent book and very well done.

Sincerely,
Kevin

The recommendation actually would be Krieg 1809 if you can read German! It was based on Austrian archives and pretty much every French printed volume. Likewise, see the thread on Ferdi Wober's Aspern book – he has also written interesting books on Raab and Papa (Hungarian theatre) – he has a similar style to Krieg (pretty matter of fact) with some very dark corners illuminated every so often.

Petre is interesting as it uses Angeli as well as Saski, but the style is rather tortuous and Petre is an N fan, so the opinion-pieces are a bit dated now.

Regretably, having read the books listed above, you will not learn anything from Last Victory, which is also shot through with silly errors. Epstein's book, also called Last Victory (Nap's Last Victory in this case) is really an extention of his work on Eugene (which goes as far as Raab) and is interesting only in the Eugene/MacDonald pieces. Rothenberg's Great Adversary has some useful info in it, but obviously can't include much detail. You can also find some Austrian memoirs from Wagram in my Warrior 24.

Eysturlid is really about Charles' theoretical ideas and rather tortuous, but he has failed to grasp the way Charles ran his senior command and the practicalities of the time.

In a word, a full size book on Wagram still remains to bewrotten in any language.

Having read The Emperor's Last Victory I wouldn't recommend it.

It is very heavy on the logistics of the battle and doesn't cover very well the actual fighting

I just couldn't believe finding a picture of Charles carrying a flag with the caption

'…here he seizes the banner of Infantry Regiment Zach and directs a counter-attack against Prince Eugene's divisions on the evening of the first day of Wagram.'

Ouch.

To be fair to Rick Schneid, he did say that he realised his error soon after writing that caption. It does demonstrate the Wagram fixation, which seems to have grown up among Rothenberg's students. As a book, if you have read nothing else on the subject, it is not such a bad place to start and this was a wider market venture.

I would also commend the Army Museum booklets, (in German) which cover Ebelsberg and some of the fighting in the Tyrol. There are two on Aspern and Wagram, but they are rather general and have been largely incoprorated into other recent works.

I see Bob's Austerlitz is being paired with Rothenberg's LAst Victory on Amazon!

Rothenberg's "Great Adversary" doesn't have much detail at 275 pages but your Osprey is recommended?
Bit of self-promotion there. And self-delusion? Its hard to take your recomendations as genuine.

@ Raducci

Have you photocopied/read either?

Rothenberg is a general overview of the Austrian army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, a huge task. Even the lengthy sections on Aspern and Wagram give only the most basic details.

The Osprey Warrior contains some memoirs from participants in the battle of Wagram – that might be of interest as you will not have seen them in English anywhere and probably do not know the German sources.

Great Adversary has less than 50 pages in its first edition to cover the entire 1809 campaign.

They are two different products.

If anyone's interested in publications in German, Manfried Rauchensteiner has written two booklets on the 1809 Campaign, Die Schlacht von Aspern am 21. und 22. Mai 1809 and Die Schlacht bei Deutsch Wagram am 5. and 6. Juli 1809.

The first has orders of battle, three maps and a photo of the big granary in Essling. The second has two maps, and orders of battle. Both have bibliographies that might be helpful.

Sincerely,
Kevin

See my 1.42 am post! These were used by Ian Castle, Rothenberg, Wober and Gill, so there is not much of value left in them aside from the ref to Hirst's work on French casualties at Wagram.

Glenn,

Napoleon's Great Adversary is a study of the Austrian army of the period until 1814. I found the information on 1809 most helpful, especially the information on the commanders, corps organization, and the staff. The overall assessment of the Austrian army for 1809 is also excellent.

The referenced Osprey has primary information blended in with the text for 1809 on pages 47-52 and for Plate F on page 61. It is a good and useful reference and I have found it valuable. Of the 23 (If I counted correctly) references listed in the bibliography, only three or four are primary sources. There are also some 'interesting' statements in the booklet such as (in 1794) '..Infantry played a support role, securing ground and holding key villages.' (page 50); 'The 1809 battles marked the end of cavalry's real effectiveness…' (page 52); and 'Aspern marks the end of cavalry's domination of the battlefield.' (page 54). None of these remarks are supported and tend to be contradicted by warfare development since Maurice of Nassau and examples from the period until 1815. The text also admits that Austrian skirmishing capability wasn't proficient (pages 32 and 46).

However, the booklet is highly recommended, along with the author's excellent volume on Austrian Auxiliary Troops.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Dear Dave,

You are correct. I take full responsibility for the caption errors in Rothenberg's, Napoleon's Last Victory. Remember, Rothenberg passed away several months before the galley proofs were completed. The "silly errors" you mention, cannot be blamed on Rothenberg, as he did not have an opportunity to read through the final draft.

As for your comment that Rothenberg's students are fixated upon Wagram, I am unclear how you came to that conclusion?

Best Regards,

Rick Schneid

I think you are having difficulty with the meaning of primary material – no great surprise given your failure to read key French and Austrian artillery primary material

The main purpose of an Osprey bibliography is to provide the average reader with materials in English, which are accessible and thus, obviously, secondary – this was in the first paragraph in this case.

From the second, the Alamanac/Schematis, the Okonomie and pictures in the Rivista are all primary (well, you can argue about paintings, but they are the 1798 official plates). They show the army as it was – and show your claims about MAA299's five pictures to be wrong given your reliance on he unsourced ELting/Knotel. The others all contain primary quoted material, notably Gallina, one of the books on which Bowden was tripped up. All the survivbing objects in the musems are primary as are the printed memoirs by Ellrich, von Grueber, Mahler, Rauch and von Ense. The regulations are listed in the text, basically the 1769 and 1806/7 plus some individual pieces in Gallina. Zach's opinion of the officer corps was in the Mitt des KA as are the 1812 memoires, while Rzieb's memoir was published in a similar supplematary publication in about 1913 by Wilhelm John. The national characteristics are from a couple of British travellers' impressions from the end part of the wars. Goethe's description is actually quoted in the text of Ottenfeld.

In terms of the 1809 battles, these are drawn from direct memoirs published in the Staff histories, Krieg 1809 and Befreiungskriege 1813. The main soucres, which could not be listed for reasosn of space – and are not that accesible are some regimental histories and memoirs published in 1848-52 in the military newspaper "Osterreichische Soldatenfreund". This was published about 3 times a week and requires a great deal of page turning just to find these rare memoirs – which is why they have not been published before, except one Jaeger memoir not included here.

I would thus not take too much notcie of those, clearly having diffioculty understanding what primary material is.

Rothenberg's assessment of the 1809 army is rather dated now, although to be fair, he was coming at the whole subject from square 1 in 1980, but rather driven by the Ruling Theory of the time (you can sense the 1807 reaction in it), just as Eysturlid models Charles in the same way as Napoleon ran things, when in reality N was a control-freak like say Tony Blair, while Charles' own fitness meant he delegated much more, say like Pres Reagen. The world has moved on in the past 25 years since GA was first published.

The demise of cavalry at Aspern is well-recorded and it would never have a major effect on the big battlefields after that – the pic on p.54 illustrates that. the 1794 ref is a mix of Gallina, Krieg 1792 Vol.1 and regt histories from the time. the skirmishing capabilities of the infantry are discussed in the Tactics chapter and the remark on p.32 was a measure to control volunteer skirmishers after a problem with them in the final stage of Marengo. Rosenberg's remarks in 1809 are well-documented and show the other side of the coin – which you rarely see in works about the French. It was also a time, when the Austrian forces had not had much experience and were lacking training.

Hello, Rick – If there was a public flogging for every caption error, I doubt anyone would write or edit books! It is not worth making an issue of.

There are some editorial typos in there, but I just got the feeling that despite the many works on the subject since 1980, Rothenberg had failed to move on. So, there are many errors of fact and well, we can discuss interpretations at length. While left and right will often get confused, there were some very simple errors, such as the General ranks, which should not have been made in the first place.

The whole book is geared towards Wagram – and it is guided itself in some ways by the erroneous claims made by Epstein about the Austrian army in his book on the lead up and battle of Wagram. Whether people are Rothenberg's students or like Eysturlid, influenced by him, you hear the same line, such that it is now Ruling Theory at least in the US, and it happens to suit the pro-N grouping, who look for the post-1807 reaction. They have to get round what went wrong at Eckmuhl and Aspern does not count due to its specific features, so it comes down to a "fair match" at Wagram.

By itself, a caption error is certainly nothing. However, it is a symptom of why myself, and I think many others, who automatically grabbed the book on sight were so disappointed by it.

Daft errors not picked up, too many sentences taken word-for-word from 'Adversaries', unsatisfactory OOB's (individual unit strengths?) and the far too thin coverage of the main event itself. Together all presenting an unfair impression that the book was thrown together on a wet weekend.

Thanks to all who give advice on books.
Sadly I think "Krieg 1809" keeps without reach as libraries don't have it in the netherlands and the reprinted editions are too steep to buy.

I think in Rick's case that maybe the Wagram mindset led to that picture error – I made the same mistake in NV72 on the wagons as in my mind's eye, I saw the Duffy 2 and 4 wheel wagons and noted it as such, when it is actually 2 & 4 horse wagons, both with 4 wheels.

However, it still leaves space for the first full crack at Wagram ….

Jan, You have plenty to be going on with for now!

Dear Dave,

There was no Wagram mindset when I wrote the captions. It was purely a careless error.

In regards to "Ruling Theory," historians refer to it as the traditional interpretation. As you have argued against it for so many years in reference to the Habsburg army, I encourage you to submit a scholarly article to the Journal of Military History or War in History. These are two leading scholarly journals which publish scholarly articles that challenge traditional and revisionist interpretations of military history. I think your contributions would be invaluable to the historiographical debate. I fear that you will continue to be frustrated by "Ruling Theory" until you can introduce your arguements and evidence in a professional history forum. The field would be better for it.

As you have often remarked that you have conducted extensive research in the Kriegsarchiv, such an article on the Habsburg army of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, based upon primary archival sources, would be well received.

It is true that Rothenberg's Great Adversaries is dated, but as it is 25 years since its publication, it is time to explore the subject matter again.

I hope you will seriously consider writing and submitting such an article to one of the journals I have cited above. Simply presenting your perspective and evidence on a website will not alter "Ruling Theory."

Best Regards,

Rick

Glen I own copies of the Rothenberg books. And have read them a coupla times. The Osprey get perused as and when I find them.
Thanks for asking.

Rick, I tend to think that first, it is important to win over the kind of enthusiasts we have here. They are the bedrock of the subject, they buy the books in large numbers and ultimately, they want to know about the subject. Intellectual arguments over minutiae of Waterloo are all very interesting,but I suspect there would be more interest in a single book on Waterloo, taking in all 3 sides, of which there is still none in English anyway. It is only 13 years ago, that Ian was commissioned to write Aspern/Wagram – two big battles in one small book as the subject was hardly talked about then. That it is now one of Osprey's 5 biggest Nap sellers and a mainstream publisher will put out a book on 1809 for a wider audience is a sign of how far we have come, but the spadework has been done by a very small group.

It is easy to write about Nap, because everyone knows the framework and there are plenty of vioews about him and his army. There is a wide enough constituency on here to get some kind of response on a variety of subjects – at the more intellectual end, there are really not enough people, who know the subject in depth to get much of a response. Can you imagine a 7K essay on the Lichtenstein system? RT will kick in as many there will simply ignore the new pieces or you get "ah yes, all very interesting, but Gribeauval" – consequently, half the essay would have to cover Gribeauval's life, including refs to his time in Austria, which is only covered properly in Germanic sources. To discuss the Yr XI, you have to get into "Piedmontese" being French code at the time for "captured Austrian" and the background to French infighting. You finish up writing an essay with little about Feuerstein's designs!

There is a great essay in the latest edition of the Int Journal of Nautical Archaeology about RT and the alleged Queen Anne's Revenge. We can however all get to grips with the complex arguments about RT because we all know a bit about Blackbeard and pirate ships. I have had discussions with 3 publishers about a biog of Archduke Charles – in the time period, I have changed my views about him after reading all kinds of material; they have wanted 3 different books – one was "Campaigns of ", another wanted a focus on the man and the last was a rather thin mix. There is an Amazon review of Last Victory on Amazon, where the reviewer says he did not appreciate the constraints Charles worked under – the model most people use is that he worked in a similar way to Nap.

The French fans I have worked with and talked to all have a better understanding of the Imperial army – and a higher regard for it – because of what has been put out by Ian, Bernhard, Ferdi, myself and the guys, who run reenactments. I am not sure that we would have got far with WiH esaays. That said, point taken!

I always wondered what happened to the 'forthcoming' biography advertised on the Spellmount edition of Rothenberg published in 1995…

Spent ages trying to find it.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a falling out. However, that has allowed time for more research and a better product – it is product design that is the problem. 2009 would be a good bet!