"Napoleon in 1816" Topic

"Following his hard-fought victory at Waterloo, Napoleon acted with his customary speed. Rather than allowing the Coalition to regroup, he launched a series of rapid offensives that drove the shattered Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies back across the Rhine. By the spring of 1816, France had regained the strategic initiative.

The eastern Allies now carried the burden of the war. Russian armies advancing through Prussia sought to unite with Austrian forces assembling in Bohemia before renewing the invasion of France. Napoleon recognised the danger immediately. If the Coalition armies combined, they would possess overwhelming numerical superiority. He therefore resolved to defeat them in detail before that junction could take place.

Lieutenant-General Konstantin Raevsky's VIII Corps had been ordered to conduct a deliberate fighting withdrawal towards the Bohemian frontier, delaying the French advance while the remainder of the Russian army retired to prepared positions. Choosing strong ground near the village of Reichenbach, Raevsky deployed his corps across a low ridge fronting a shallow stream, determined to force Napoleon into a costly frontal attack.

For Napoleon, delay was unacceptable. Every hour increased the likelihood that Austrian columns would arrive to support the Russians. Confident in the quality of his troops and determined to regain the strategic initiative, the Emperor ordered Marshal Ney's II Corps to carry the Russian position while Bessières' Cavalry Corps sought an opportunity to exploit any breach. Behind them marched elements of the Imperial Guard, held in reserve for the decisive moment.

As the morning mist lifted over the Silesian countryside, both commanders understood that the coming battle might decide not merely the fate of a corps, but the future course of the 1816 campaign."

I'm now developing this as the next battle of my 'After Waterloo' campaign and would welcome your thoughts. To date, the resurgent French have humbled the Prussians in two sharp engagements and have, after their victory over Hill's rearguard the Anglo-Hanoverians have evacuated the Continent.

Does this seem a plausible strategic situation for the spring of 1816?
If you were Napoleon, would you attack immediately or try to manoeuvre Raevsky out of his position?
If you were Raevsky, would you make a stand behind a stream and ridge or continue withdrawing towards Bohemia?
Should the French enjoy a numerical advantage, or is superior troop quality enough to justify the attack?
Finally, what terrain features would you expect to find on a battlefield where a Russian rearguard intended to delay Napoleon's advance?

Once I've ironed out the scenario, created a map & OOBs (from existing armies), I intend to present this to my chums for a December game.

Did Bessières not die in 1813 then?

He did but he got better. (Hint: this could be what-if…)

A detached corps can hold half a day against a superior force (per Clausewitz), but that's assuming help is coming and the corps doesn't have to get away. OTOH, if the corps has a delaying mission it should have minimal infantry (a jager brigade should do it) and go long on light cavalry, cossacks, and horse artillery. Enough to make the French leave the road and shake out a division into combat formation, then fall back and repeat a couple of miles up the road.

Of course an entire French army is going to be advancing on multiple roads, so a single Russian corps is either going to have to try to cover multiple roads (probably more than they can handle) or else make sure that French columns on parallel roads don't get past and behind them. Their retreat will therefore probably have to be oblique, and their resistance will only be able to buy the Russian main army a single day. If Raevsky (who should also be dead, BTW) attempts more than this, his whole corps will probably be captured.

Since the goal is a tabletop set-piece, maybe the Russians are willing to sacrifice the corps entirely if it costs the French enough time, troops, and trouble to deal with them. Give them a position that laterally threatens the main road, and which can be defended from all directions, and assume they've got a week's worth of bread stockpiled. Now the French have the tactical problem of deciding how much force to deploy to deal with the Russians, and from which of their roads.

Eumelus, thanks for the detailed response. You've raised precisely the sort of operational questions I'm hoping the scenario will explore.

I agree that a genuine Russian rearguard would probably rely heavily on light cavalry, Cossacks and horse artillery, using successive delaying positions rather than committing an entire corps to a single stand. The problem of multiple French columns advancing along parallel roads is particularly interesting, and the possibility of Raevsky being outflanked is something I need to consider.

My scenario does, however, assume that the Russians are prepared to make a more substantial stand than a conventional rearguard action. The intention is to create a situation where Raevsky must balance the need to preserve his corps against the operational necessity of buying time for the main army.

Your suggestion of a position that threatens the main road from the flank is an excellent one. It gives the French a genuine decision: commit sufficient forces to eliminate the Russian threat or attempt to bypass it, potentially exposing their own communications.

I'm also attracted to the idea that the Russians might be willing to sacrifice the corps, provided the cost in French time and casualties is sufficiently high. That could produce a much more interesting game than simply asking whether the Russians can survive.

As for Raevsky himself, you're quite right about the historical general's fate. In this alternate timeline, however, I'll assume he has survived his historical wounds!

Thanks again. Plenty to think about as I develop the map and OOBs.

Plausible as any what if

@ 14 Bore
Exactly! It's very much a fictional campaign but I'm trying to keep it rooted in what might plausibly have happened, rather than simply using the historical armies and moving them around a map.

The campaign follows its own divergence from Waterloo, with the strategic situation evolving from battle to battle. Historical precedent provides the framework but once the first few divergences occur, I'm letting events develop according to the logic of the alternate situation.

Hopefully that makes for an interesting balance between "this could never have happened" and "but what if it had?"!

1816 was the "Year without a summer". Due to a volcanic eruption temperatures fell and there was frost in every month of the year. Crops failed and there was famine. Not the best conditions to carry on a military campaign.

"C'est la soupe qui fait le soldat".
Given the French genius for La Maraude, all I can write is, "poor, poor peasants."

How far do you rewrite history.

Bessieres wounds in 1813 were mortal.
Who is Konstantin Raevski not the General who VII Korps in 1812?
Yes 1816 was the year without a summer.Shortage of food for men and horses. Marching would be slow.
Why not bring back Lannes and all the other great generals.

Use the generals that were alive in 1816. Where is Davout. Will the French public support more war. Would the Austrians go over to the French. The Emperess is Auastrian abd the King of Rome hald Austrian. Endless what if's

You're quite right that I'm rewriting history quite substantially — that's rather the point of the After Waterloo campaign. The intention isn't to suggest that this is what actually happened in 1816 but to explore a plausible alternate path from Waterloo onwards.

On Bessières, you've caught me fair and square. Historically he was killed at Rippach in May 1813. In my timeline he survived, which is one of the deliberate divergences, and that is why he commands the cavalry at Reichenbach. Oh & because i have a "Bessieres" figure in my collection.

Likewise, I have made a mistake with Raevsky's first name. The commander of the Russian VII Corps in 1812 was Nikolay Raevsky, so that should be corrected in the scenario material.

Davout is actually rather simpler: he is alive and available in this timeline but he isn't at Reichenbach. I've deliberately left I Corps out of this particular battle because the French force is already substantial. The scenario uses Ney's corps, Bessières' cavalry and selected Guard rather than trying to put every surviving senior marshal onto the table.

The 1816 setting also deliberately brings in some of the problems you mention — the poor harvest, shortages of food and fodder, and the resulting difficulty of moving and supplying large armies. Those are part of the campaign background rather than things I've ignored.They have been taken into account & I can supply the possibly boring "Account Sheets" of the campaign if you want.

As for Grouchy, Vandamme, Gérard, the French home army, the political situation in France, Austria's position, the Austrian Empress and the King of Rome — absolutely. Those are all potential branches of the wider After Waterloo timeline. That's where the fun (and danger!) of a counterfactual campaign lies: every answer creates another "what if?"

I'm trying to keep the individual scenarios playable rather than attempting to solve every possible alternate-history question before putting figures on the table. Reichenbach is one particular snapshot of that larger timeline.

In 1815 the Austro-Bavarian Army of the Upper Rhine with Russian support had penetrated well into eastern France within 10 days after Waterloo. Farther south the Austro-Sardinian Army of North Italy and the Austrian Army of Naples were advancing into southeastern France against Suchet's and Brune's commands. Behind these Barclay de Tolly's Russian Army was approaching the Rhine, while to the north there was the North German Federal "Army" plus additional British and Dutch troops available to join up with Blucher and Wellington.

Even if L'Armee du Nord would have been in any position after fighting at Ligny, Quatre Bras, Wavre and Waterloo to drive the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian armies beyond the lower Rhine, how do we get to the point where Napoleon is in a position to essentially attempt a repeat of his 1805 campaign in 1816? That isn't a rhetorical question. Whatever is or isn't going to happen in an 1816 campaign is going to depend on what happened during the rest of 1815.

That's a fair question, but I think it overlooks what has actually happened in MY After Waterloo campaign since Waterloo. This has been running for over a real year and has had several battles so far.

This isn't a timeline in which Napoleon wins at Waterloo and then simply gets a free year to rebuild the Empire and starts in 1816. There has been a lot happening between then & Reichenbach.

There have already been four major actions after Waterloo, fought on my tabletop. The French have mauled two Prussian rearguards, pushed aside an Anglo-Hanoverian blocking force and then defeated Hill in a major battle strongly enough to force the British to evacuate — effectively a second Corunna.

That changes the strategic and psychological situation considerably. As fast as N.'s enemies advance, as fast as they can retreat.

The Coalition isn't facing the France of July 1815 after Waterloo. It is facing a resurgent Napoleon whose armies have continued to win, while the Coalition's armies are operating deep in hostile territory, suffering losses (not least of which are caused by attrition) and finding that the supposedly defeated French army has not collapsed. The political and psychological consequences of that are important in a counterfactual campaign. Coalition unity and willingness to continue the war cannot simply be assumed to be identical to the historical situation.

So Reichenbach isn't intended to be "Napoleon magically gets back to 1805." It's the result of four post-Waterloo battles having gone differently, followed by a year in which those events have had time to affect French mobilisation, Coalition politics and military morale.

NB It *may* have gone otherwise & MY campaign would have been a repeat of the Campaign of 1814. that's the beauty of this 'After Waterloo' -I do not know where it may go. Yet.

So when you write:"That isn't a rhetorical question. Whatever is or isn't going to happen in an 1816 campaign is going to depend on what happened during the rest of 1815." You are correct but I've been posting about this here on TMP (& elsewhere) and I'm sorry you've missed it.

I found your campaigns against Wellington and Blucher under the Napoleonic Scenarios topic. Maybe I am missing it but where in your prior posts do you have scenarios where the French dealt with the other armies invading or approaching France in the early summer of 1815? Or are you assuming the Austrians, Bavarians, Russians and Sardinians weren't there?

Bill, you're not missing a secret series of TMP posts — the point is that TMP isn't the complete campaign record.This is, in places at least, a wargaming forum so I often post battle-info here but not much else.

I don't have a blog or a single online campaign archive. 'After Waterloo' has been running for more than a year, with the battles played on my tabletop and the campaign records kept separately, with the help of AI. I use it much as I would an umpire/campaign assistant: to keep track of what has happened, explore the consequences and suggest possible developments. I then decide what actually happens in the campaign.This is put to my pals and discussed via emails. TMP gets the odd whisper of the deeper machinations.

What I have posted is some of the battles and developments , including the campaigns against Wellington and Blücher, but I haven't posted every campaign turn or every battle. So the absence of a TMP scenario covering the Austrian, Bavarian, Russian or Sardinian forces doesn't mean they aren't present in the campaign. It also doesn't mean we've fought out every possible clash on my Ping Pong table.Yet.

The historical Coalition armies are very much part of the starting situation. What happens to them, and how they interact with the French after Waterloo, is one of the things the campaign is determining.

The interesting question for me is therefore not "How can we prove Napoleon could have reached this position in 1816?" but "Given what has actually happened in the campaign since Waterloo, what follows from it?" Plausible. Possible. Not definitive.

However, if you are ever in the neighbourhood, I can make you a full partner, offer you a role (the Prussian leadership is still going begging) and invite you over for the periodic 'V&F'game. Would you like to give me your contact details I can share with my campaign AI? (NB like Paul Simon, we call him "AL".)

theminiaturespage.com

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Somewhere in all this, there is apparently a coherent campaign plan.

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