"Napoleonic fieldworks" Topic

The rules my group are currently using (Soldiers of Napoleon) allow a defender an area of field works, ad-hoc barricades of rocks and logs,walls…my Bellona manual military field works of the 18th & 19th centuries is of a little help but I'd like a few more ideas as to what these defenses might look like.

One description of The Great Redoubt at Borodino is as follows:

This is one of those details, though, that I mentioned as not being consistent among all the narratives I referenced. Some described the Great Redoubt as a formidable emplacement, with then foot deep ditches thirty feet wide, reinforcing gabions, packed earth backed-up by wooden planks, and fronted down the slope with hundreds of deep wolf-pits (holes for men or horses to fall into). However, the archivist Bogdonovich and Clausewitz, who himself was there, don't mention these details, but both noted how sloppy and unfinished the emplacements were.

Clausewitz says it was poor quality, dug by militia with no engineers present and barely knee high, but other sources disagree.

You would be looking at everything from earthworks and earth filled gabions to sandbag works with (or without) log supports. Sandbags did exist then.

Using Google Maps you can still see the footprint of the Borodino fletches (earthworks) using satellite view. It gives a decent sense of their dimensions.

You might also want to get a good book on Vauban that will be illustrated with siege works which would help as the 'process' and design did not change much from Vauban to Napoleon.

Maps of battles where they were used e.g. Kunersdorf link often show the plan on the ground. I'd say combine that with your Bellona manual and you have more than enough to make some generics that will be functionally correct. Remember a good engineer fits a work to the terrain, the drawing board approach is for training purposes.