Prussian Army

The Battle of the Nations – 16-19 October, 1813

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The October, 1813 Battle of the Nations in Leipzig was arguably as important as the 1814 Battle of Waterloo.  In English language historiography of the Napoleonic Wars it is often downplayed or only briefly mentioned however.  This is mainly because no English speaking armies fought in the battle.  The lions share of the fighting at Leipzig was done by Austrian and Russian armies and thus the English speaking world tries to ignore this decisive battle in which almost 50,000 men died. After Napoleons’ defeat in the Russian Campaign of 1812 and the concurrent French defeat in the Peninsular Campaign the Allied nations of Europe joined together once again in the … More after the Jump…

200th Anniversary of the Battle of the Nations re-enactment – 20 October, 2013

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The Battle of the Nations in and around Leipzig, Germany from 16-20 October, 1813, was the culminating battle of 1813 and the last major battle fought prior to the fighting in France in 1814 before Napoleon’s defeat, abdication, and exile to Elba.  It was the largest battle fought in Europe to that time with over 500,000 soldiers on both sides.  The city of Leipzig spent millions renovating the huge memorial to the battle and planned a week of commemorations coinciding with the 200th Anniversary of the battle. This past weekend I went to the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of the Nations re-enactment.  This was billed as the highlight of the … More after the Jump…

My First Peer-Reviewed Article

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I received notification this morning that my first Peer-Reviewed article has been accepted for publication.   It is an annotated bibliography of Frederick the Great for Oxford University Press (OUP) Online and it has taken me awhile to write it up.   The process of writing it is pretty interesting in and of itself and I am going to describe how that went. I was first contacted by OUP last November asking if I had any interest in writing an article.   The initial contact had the proposed subject and that Dr. Dennis Showalter is the Editor-in-Chief for the project. Because I get blog related spam and fishy requests and … More after the Jump…

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Given that I generally try to concentrate on the German Wars of Unification when I do any serious research I thought I would toss this link out there.   I ran across the following article about the Battle of Lundby in 1864 today.   It is probably the best description of any single action from the Danish War of 1864 I have ever seen.   What makes it so great for my purposes is that it is in English and I can direct my readers to it.   The first of the German Wars of Unification, the Danish War of 1864, is practically ignored in English scholarship and thus finding something like this is a treasure as it sheds light on the development of Prussian tactical and operational methods that is not generally open to the English speaking world.

The Battle of Jena-Auerstädt: 14 Oct 1806

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The Battle of Jena-Auerstädt was fought in Germany on 1806 between the French Imperial Army and the Prussian Royal Army. It is actually two separate battles separated by about twenty miles. Both the French and Prussian armies were split leading to two separate engagements one was fought by Napoleon and Davout commanded the French Corps at Auerstädt. The battle at Jena was the larger of the two as far as forces involved are concerned but the action at Auerstädt was operationally the more decisive. Combined, the Prussians suffered a devastating defeat that they could not recover from and led to the virtual surrender of the kingdom in the face of … More after the Jump…